ASLA green roof project

We've blogged about green roofs before and the benefits that they can provide to the occupants of a building, whether that is a place of employment or a house.

The American Society of Landscape Architects has been conducting a long term study into the benefits of installing a green roof.

Some of their ongoing results make for very interesting reading:

• the green roof created a 10 percent reduction in building energy use during winter months and negligible difference in the summer

• from July 2006 to May 2007 the green roof retained nearly 75 percent of the total rainfall

• the roof typically retained 100 percent of a one-inch rainfall.

• the green roof has been substantially cooler than conventional black roofs on neighboring buildings.

This is all very science based and doesn't take into account the advantages that green roofs provide for human amenity as well as for birds and other wildlife.

Someone really needs to try and come up with a good reason why we aren't doing more of this in Australia. There is no excuse for building a new building with a flat concrete roof and not doing this.