The Green Building Movement has hit the mainstream and many of our clients have been requesting green design lately.
We’ve been designing houses using high-efficiency HVAC systems, sustainable building products, high R-value foam insulation and high-efficiency windows for years.
We’ve stepped it up a bit though, in response to the recent demand for green design. We’re looking at photovoltaic solar panels, geothermal heat pumps and residential wind turbines. These technologies are relatively expensive though, and not for everyone.
Soon, we’ll have a way to go green at a low cost.
Inhabitat points us to Toyota Roof Garden Corp (a subsidiary of the company that brings us the Hybrid Prius). Their Green Roof Tiles are 20 inches square, 2 inches thick, self-irrigating and less than fifty bucks a unit.
At this point, the company only has a Japanese website, so we don’t have much more information than what Inhabitat, Ecofriend, Livescience and GreenGeek have to offer. It looks like a winner, so we’ll post more info as we find it.
Our company, Greener By Design, has installed more square footage than any company in the Northeast and we are based in Pelham and have been spearheading the green roof movement in this area for ten years.
The Toyota product is convenient but very expensive. Our extensive greenroofs have gone in as low as six dollars a square foot (144 square inches) with irrigation. This was the cost of the greenroof at Silvercup Studios which we installed a couple of years ago.Silvercup was built with local products for the most part, supporting US based companies, not that I am anti-toyota, but buying local is important in sustainability.
Greenroofs thinner than three inches require a lot more water making them less sustainable. The Ford greenroof in Michigan was planted at a 2 inch depth and used massive amounts of water to get established.