If you need to replace your roof or want to make your home more ecologically friendly, you may want to go with a green roof. No, we’re not talking about the colour of your roof here. A green roof is a roof that is partly or completely out of a growing medium placed over a waterproof membrane. The term can also refer to roofs that use green technology such as solar panels. Some other types of roofs, such as those featuring container gardens or rooftop ponds, are not usually considered true green roofs.
Green roofs have several advantages over standard roofs. For one, they allow you to grow vegetables, flowers, and other plants on the roof. This actually helps to insulate your roof so your home will keep in the heat in winter and keep your home cooler in the summer. This also makes your roof last longer, help reduce water runoff, and even help reduce the pollution in the air.
There are a couple different types of green roofs, including extensive, intensive, and semi-intensive. Intensive roofs require a good amount of soil, need a lot of upkeep, and require regular irrigation. Extensive roofs, on the other hand, are mostly self-sustaining and need only a bit of maintenance. A semi-intensive roof is a combination of the two.
Green roofs aren’t as expensive as you might expect, but they may not be an option for your home. Often, the structure of the home, especially older homes, isn’t strong enough to support a green roof. In that case, your only option would be to have your home overhauled to handle the weight, and that can be very, very costly. In the UK today, green roofs are installed in many large urban areas that don’t feature many parks or gardens.
There are a couple of disadvantages to green roofs. As stated, some buildings can’t handle the weight of the green roof. Also, the buildings waterproofing must be very well done because green roofs hold water in the soil. If the roof isn’t constructed very well, water could leak down into the building. These two disadvantages, however, are minor in comparison to the things a green roof can do.
