What is "ceramic-acrylic" coating on your Voyager material?
      Our ceramic-acrylic coating is a highly engineered combination of solar-reflective ceramics suspended in a hybrid emulsion of acrylic-urethane resins in water. This low V.O.C reflective coating incorporates top quality elastomeric polymers and unique ceramics.

How does Red Sky Shelters Voyager fabric insulate the roof?
      The coating on our Voyager roof fabric has suspended in it tiny ceramic spheres that are so small they are only slightly thicker than a human hair. These balls are hollow with a wall thickness of about 1/10 of their diameter. Yet they are amazingly strong, each one has a compressive strength of over 6000 psi and can withstand temperatures of 1800 degrees C. Furthermore, they are both chemically resistant and non-combustible.
      Once a ceramic material is hardened, its electrons are tightly bound within a crystalline structure. This prevents them from interacting with neighboring electrons and thus exchanging energy (heat transfer). This inability to exchange energy is what makes ceramics a good insulator. These ceramic balls can be subjected to hundreds of degrees of heat and moments later are cool enough to pick up with your bare fingers.
      Furthermore, most all the gas inside these spheres has been removed to create a vacuum. Physics law states that nothing can move by conduction (see insulation explanation page) through a vacuum, for it represents an absence of matter. In effect we have a miniature thermos bottle (a microscopic hollow vacuum sphere that resists thermal conductivity).
      When applied onto our roof fabric these ceramic beads nestle together as the water and other vehicles evaporate creating a tightly packed film of "thermos bottle like" vacuum cells. These ceramic spheres form a hard yet flexible layer that provides a thermal barrier reflecting over 80% of the radiant energy that strikes the Yomes roof. They also offer improved dirt resistance and protection from harmful UV rays (it is the UV rays that causes things to degrade in the sun just as it can damage our bodies and skin).
 
How can Red Sky Shelters offer darker roof colors that don't absorb a lot of heat?
      The secret is in the pigments we use. To understand how they work we must first understand how light and solar energy operates:
      Light comes in many colors. The difference in these colors relates to the frequency of light's wavelength. The reason we perceive different colors is that each object absorbs all visible light except the light of that color. The light that's being reflected is the color we see.
      White things reflect most all of visible light while black things absorb most all visible light. As you probably know, black things (like your driveway or black upholstery) absorb a lot of heat too, while white things stay cool. In fact, some dark colored roofing can attain a temperature of 190 degrees F or more. However, what we see as visible light represents only a small portion of the energy that comes from the sun. It turns out that most of the heat is not in the visible light. Black things get hotter because they are also absorbing infrared radiation. Infrared (meaning "less than red"-- in frequency) is the invisible part of the spectrum that we experience mostly as heat.
      If we could develop pigments that reflect infrared radiation regardless of what visible colors they absorb, surfaces painted with them would stay exceptionally cool. If these same pigments could also reflect UV, or ultraviolet radiation (meaning "greater than violet" in frequency), then the roof they cover would be much longer lasting. And this is in fact what Red Sky Shelters has done.
      Actually this was developed by the military over a decade ago. It has been kept classified, however, in the past few years (2002) has become available. Red Sky Shelters may be the first to combine these pigments with the technology of solar-reflective ceramics. The result is a waterproof, durable and insulating roof covering.