Living Green Roofs and Their Essential Benefits (Video)

By N.Morgan

In ancient times green roofs consisted of cave-like structures or sod roofs covered with earth and plants commonly used for agriculture, dwelling, and ceremonial purposes. These early shelters provided protection from the elements, good insulation during the winter months, and a cool location in the summer.

Unfortunately for modern conveniences, these were neither waterproof nor was there any system to keep out unwanted burrowing wildlife.

 Nowadays people are thinking more about their surroundings and protecting the environment. So, they are doing everything, which will make this Earth a better place to live in. A green roof, often called living roof, is one such initiative, which is a part of the building’s roof and partially or completely covered with vegetation and also a growing medium. It is planted right over the waterproofing membrane, which will maintain the longevity of the roof well.

This roof comprises of some of the added layers like drainage and root barrier, and even irrigation systems. The container gardens as on roofs are areas where plants are maintained inside pots. These options are not generally considered true green roofs even though the topic is highly debacle. These rooftop ponds are likely to form another round of green roofs, used for treating grey water. Drainage layer, soil, vegetation, irrigation system, and roof barriers are here to constitute the greener roof. You can head on towards prcroofingpro.com to learn more about the idea of green roofing now.

Considering various building purposes

Green roofs are known to serve multiple purposes for the building like providing right insulation, absorbing rainwater and even creating habitat for wildlife. It further helps in increasing benevolence and even decreases stress right of people around the roof by offering them with a more aesthetically pleasing landscape. This section is perfect for helping to just lower the urban air temperature and even mitigating the heat island effect.

• These green roofs are always made suitable for retrofit or even redevelopment based projects. Furthermore, you can add-on these roofs to the new buildings and can further be well installed on the smaller garages or larger commercial, industrial and municipal buildings.
• They can always utilize the natural functions associated with the plants for filtering water and treating air in the urban and suburban landscapes. There are mainly two major forms of green roofs and you get to choose whichever matches your choice the most.
• You have the intensive green roofs, which are noted to be thicker and with a minimum depth of around 12.8cm. It helps in supporting wider varieties of plants but is heavier. These products are in need of more maintenance.
• Another example is that of the extensive roofs, which are shallow in look and ranging in depth from around 2cm to 12.7cm. The products are lighter when compared to the intensive greener roofs and will need minimal maintenance to say the least.
• Sometimes, this term “green roof” is used for indicating roofs using any form of greener technology like cool roof, roof with the solar thermal collectors or even the photovoltaic panels.
• Some people will often refer green roofs to be oikosteges, eco-roofs, living roofs, vegetated roofs, VCPH or even green roofs.

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Perfect as energy conservation and thermal reduction

Green roofs are designed to improve and further reduce energy consumption. It can always be sued for reducing the heating by adding mass and even the thermal resistance value. It can be widely used for reducing the heat island by increasing the evapotranspiration.

• According to a study in the year 2005, it was showed that green roofs can always reduce heat loss and even energy consumption during the winter months. Even a modeling study came to the result that adding these green roofs to around 50% of available surfaces might cool the entire city by around 0.2 to 1.4 degree F.
• A green roof is designed to reduce cooling loads on the said building, where it will be placed, by around 50 to 90%. It so happens if the place is glassed-in to work well as a passive and terrarium solar based heat reservoir.
• Concentrated use of the greener roofs in the urban areas can eventually reduce the average temperature of the city during summer times. It will be combating the urban heat based island effect.
• The traditional roofing and building materials might absorb sun’s UV rays and re-emit as heat, making the cities around 4 degrees C hotter than the surrounding zones. But, you can cool down the temperature by adding green roofs in the list.
• Green roofs are becoming quite popular in some parts of the world, especially in those areas with higher heat consumption or long summer days. Their uses in those areas are encouraged according to regulations just for combating the urbanized heat island effect.

Green roofs are noted to add low impact based development. Some cities have further passed code to offer incentives to the builders who put greenery on their rooftop buildings. According to some of the other studies noted, it can now be easily estimated that if all roofs in any major city were greened, then the urban temperatures might reduce by as much as around 7 degrees C.

Perfect for water management

Green roofs are used for reducing the stormwater runoff with the help of water-wise gardening system. Here, the green roofs are known to play a major role in retrofitting the LID practices in the urbanized areas. Some studies as presented stated that water runoff was actually reduced by a whopping of 75% mainly during the rainstorms. Right now, the water seemed to have stored by the substrate of the roof and then taken up or rather absorb by the plants. From that point, water returns back to the atmosphere through the idea of evaporation and transpiration.

Focusing on ecological benefits

Green roofs are known to create natural habitat as a major section of the urban wilderness. Even in some of the high rising urban areas, it has been experimented and noted that green roofs have the power to attract beneficial birds, insects, butterflies, and bees. It helps in highlighting the diversity of the species and also bias right towards the smaller ground-nesting species. This greenery complements the wild areas well by offering stepping stones for birds.

So, these points are enough to prove the necessity of green roofs in urban areas for now and why you should hurry up and get one for your use!

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References:

https://www.gardenfurnitureland.com/blog/green-roofs-and-their-essential-benefits/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vN9z0QTvy00

Stories Contributed by N. Morgan