SUSTAINABILITY
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Green Roofs | LEED | Energy Star | Cool Roof Rating Council
Sustainable design seeks to reduce negative impacts on the environment and the health and comfort of building occupants, thereby improving building performance. The basic objectives of sustainability are to reduce consumption of non-renewable resources, minimize waste and create a healthy productive environment.
Sustainable design principles include the ability to:
- Optimize site potential
- Minimize non-renewable energy consumption
- Use environmentally preferable products
- Protect and conserve water
- Enhance indoor environment quality
- Optimize operation and maintenance procedures
The proper selection of a roofing system is a critical element in a sustainable design.
Roof 1 Consultants Ltd. works with some of the leading manufacturers of sustainable roof systems and supports the use of sustainable designs.
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Green roofs permit the transformation of most flat or sloped roofs into a landscaped environment.
Green roofs provide building owners and tenants with many ecological, technical and economic benefits:
- Adds a green space for tenant use and recreation
- Reduces the “Urban Heat Island” effect
- Manages storm water run off – green roofs retain 50% - 90% of a typical rainfall on the roof
- Processes airborne toxins and re-oxygenates the air
- Improves a building’s energy efficiency
- Extends roof membrane life
- Creates therapeutic and peaceful environments
- Can be single source warranted from the deck up
Many choices of green roofs are available including lightweight Extensive Systems, medium weight Shallow-Intensive (Lawn Type) Systems, heavier Intensive Systems and Sloped Systems.
The systems differ mainly in the soil depth and type of vegetation.
Waterproofing membranes include monolithic hot applied rubberized asphalt membranes, modified bituminous sheet membranes and various single ply sheet membranes.
Many major North American corporations are now installing green roof systems on their facilities as a demonstration of their commitment to environmental stewardship.
Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED)
The U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Green Building Roofing System is the nationally accepted standard of high performance green buildings.
LEED promotes a whole building approach to sustainability by recognizing performance in five key areas of human and environmental health:
- Sustainable site development
- Water savings
- Energy efficiency
- Materials selection
- Indoor environmental quality
Certain roofing products and systems can contribute to points under the LEED system.
LEED certification is third party validation of a buildings performance. LEED certified projects blend environmental, economic and occupant oriented performance. They cost less to operate and maintain; are energy and water efficient, have higher lease-up rates than conventional buildings in the same market, and are a physical demonstration of the values of the organization that own and occupy them.
Energy Star is a joint program of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of Energy helping both corporate and private citizens save money and protect the environment through energy efficient products and practices.
An Energy Star qualified roof product is a reflective roof product that lowers the surface temperature by up to 100 F (46 C), thereby decreasing the amount of heat transferred into a building’s interior and and is subject to less expansion and contraction stress and less heat buildup.
Energy Star roof specifications are not restricted to any particular type of products but at the present time roof coatings, single ply membranes and metal panels make up the bulk of Energy Star roof products.
Some of the benefits of Energy Star qualified roof products include:
- Saves money and energy – can reduce energy bills up to 50% in the southern regions
- Downsizes cooling equipment – can reduce peak cooling demand by 10% - 15%
- Reduces “Heat Island Effect” – helps keep urban areas cooler by reflecting the sun’s rays
- Reduces pollution – lowers energy demand resulting in less burning of fossil fuels for power generation
- Increases roof product life – Energy Star products maintain a more constant temperature resulting in less stress from thermal cycling
Cool Roof Rating Council (CRRC)
The Cool Roof Rating Council was created in 1998 to develop accurate and credible methods for evaluating and labeling the solar reflectance and thermal emittance of roofing products and to disseminate the information to all interested parties.
It is an independent and non-biased organization that has established a rating system for displaying accurate radiative property data on the outermost layer of roof surfaces.
Many products rated with the CRRC may improve the energy efficiency of buildings while positively impacting our environment.
At the heart of the CRRC is its Product Rating Program in which roofing manufacturers can label various roof surface products with radiative property values rated under a strict program administered by the CRRC. The CRRC does not set a minimum definition of “Cool”. This is left to the code bodies and programs that reference the CRRC rating system.
A cool roof may be defined differently by different codes or programs. In simple terms a cool roof reflects and emits the sun’s heat back to the sky instead of transferring it to the building below.
“Coolness” is measured by two properties, solar reflectance and thermal emittance. Both properties are measured on a scale of 0 to 1 and the higher the value, the “cooler” the roof.
