What do Plastic Snow Guards and Car Headlights have in Common?

New Cars.  Who doesn't appreciate a shiny new car? 

Everything is polished and clean and those cool new headlight covers really complement style of the car.  But what happens after that car has been exposed to the elements for 3 or 4 years?  The headlights and taillights begin to yellow and cloud.  What was once crystal clear polycarbonate plastic now has an appearance that doesn't complement the car anymore.  In fact, those cloudy headlights really detract from the appearance of the car, making it look "old".  There are numerous products on the market available to clean and restore the surface of a plastic headlight and some of those products work really well.  25 minutes of scrubbing and rubbing with cleaning compounds can get rid of the cloudy appearance on the surface of the headlight and "presto", the headlight looks almost as good as new.  Eventually, however, the clouding is accompanied by yellowing throughout the lens and unfortunately, there aren't any really good ways to fix that since that occurs in the plastic lens and not on the surface.  That yellowing is a sure sign of UV degradation of the plastic itself.  Eventually, those headlights become structurally weaker from the UV degradation.

So what does that have to do with plastic roof snow guards?  

They're made from the same polycarbonate plastic.  Plastic roof snow guards look great when they're new.  Unfortunately, just like the headlight covers, plastic snow guards cloud, yellow and become weaker over time.  How do we know this?  We sold them for the last 8 years.  But here at Rocky Mountain Snow Guards we are discontinuing our CP5 Polycarbonate Snow Guards for good.  It may seem like a bad move for a snow guard company to eliminate a product that is quite popular (there are lots of plastic snow guard companies out there), but we think it's the right thing to do. We don't want to sell any snow retention product that we can't be proud of after only 3 years on the roof.

Rest assured that here at Rocky Mountain Snow Guards, we're not abandoning the inexpensive metal roof snow guard market. 

In fact, we're introducing out new RGW (Wide) Snow Guard for just this type of application.  We think that most property owners expect that the snow guards they install to control snow and ice movement should look as good as their metal roof for many many years.  RGW metal snow guards are available in both mill finish and powder coated finish to match the color of any roof.  Our standard RGW snow guard measures 2.75" high x 2.50" wide.  The standard RGW comes with 4 mounting holes for #12 self tapping/self sealing Woodbinder Eclipse screws.  Each RGW is mounted with the attachment screws above the pad face for an excellent appearance from the ground.  Rocky Mountain Snow Guards is also introducing a 2.5" tall x 1.75" wide version of the RGW snow guard for metal panels with minor ribs such as the Metal Sales Pro Panel II metal roof.  This smaller version is called the RGN (Narrow) Snow Guard.  Rocky Mountain Snow Guards does not recommend adhesive or tape attachment of any of our many types of snow guards.

Less expensive than similarly sized plastic snow guards, the RGW Aluminum snow guard will look great for the life of the roof.

 

Please contact Rocky Mountain Snow Guards for customized RGW metal roof snow guards quote.