roofscaping- creating green roofs ::

DecoR Stone products & Green Roofs | Breakfast Point Sydney | Monument | Mirvac | Mirvac 2 |

A green roof is also referred to as a vegetated or eco-roof and is partly or entirely covered with vegetation and soil. It is a lightweight roofing system, where most designs allow for the reproduction of rooftop vegetation while safeguarding the underlying roof.

Green roof systems offer a practical and attractive way to deal with some of the most important ecological issues that urban cities are facing. Learning more about green roof technology is a critical method to enable cities to develop while warranting the defence and sustained life or our natural environment.

Benefits of Green Roofs:

Improve insulation: reduce heating and cooling (green roofs could decrease urban temperature)
Reduce storm water run off: Carries contaminants, including hazardous heavy metals from paved surfaces and rooftops. Storm water run off has been identified as a major source of water pollution.
Filter pollutants and CO2 (carbon dioxide) out of the air
Lengthen the life span of roofs resulting in decreased maintenance and savings in replacement costs (economic benefit)
Reduce the Urban Heat Island Effect: Conventional building materials absorb the sun's radiation and reflect it back as heat, making cities hotter than surrounding suburbs. Reductions of the Urban Heat Island Effect will also minimise the spreading of dust and production of smog. This, in turn, can potentially reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Provide habitat for plants and animals
Leisure facility for building users
Sound insulation
Aesthetic appeal
Increase the value of the property and marketability

Roof scaping or green roofs provide us with the chance to lessen the impact of architectural practices and urban development by imitating the environment that we have damaged. Green roofs represent many environmental benefits and can help bring back the ecological value of open space and vegetation to densely developed urban cities.

DecoR Stone's Products & Green Roofs:

DecoR Stone has supplied numerous projects where mundane roof decks were developed into architecturally and environmentally attractive creations.

DecoR Glass and DecoR Pebbles provide ideal light weight permanent colored aggregate for use in the greenscaping of urban high-rise roof decks. The 5-10mm glass and pebble aggregate can be loose or laid mixed with an adhesive epoxy or acrylic resin to permanently hold them in place. The application is usually carried out at a thickness 20-30mm over the drainage system. The coverage rate of a 5-10mm aggregate is approximately 20kg per m² at 10mm depth.

Whilst the DecoR Pebble range of manufactured aggregate offers a more cost efficient product, the 36 colours of crushed recycled glass offers designers a greater range of vibrant and soft colours to select from. The coloured recycled crushed glass is becoming increasingly popular with environmentally conscious designers. The manufactured 5-10mm aggregate decorative pebbles are also a result of the utilisation of stone cut-offs, which are crushed and tumbled to the specified size required.

Intensive vs. Extensive Green Roofs:

** please note this table is only a guide

intensive and extensive green roofs: comparison
Characteristic	Extensive green roof	Intensive green roof
Vegetation	vegetative ground covers and grasses	large trees, shrubs, and well-maintained gardens
Soil	Requires only 25 -130mm of soil/ pebbles depth	Requires minimum of at least 300mm of soil/ pebbles depth
Drainage	simple irrigation and drainage systems	complex irrigation and drainage systems
Load	Adds only 0.5-2kg per square metre depending on soil characteristics and the type of substrate	Adds 3-7kg per square metre of load to building structure
Maintenance	annual maintenance	significant maintenance required
Access	usually not designed for public accessibility	regular access allowed

Breakfast Point Sydney

Located on the banks of the Paramatta River is unquestionably on of Australia's most exclusive community developments. Providing an astounding view across the water to a distant Harbour Bridge, the landscape architects decided to re-crate the geographical contours of the adjacent river on the two low level 300 square metre roof decks, which the multi-million apartments overlook. This roofscaping project integrated the use of crushed cast-off coloured glass and manufactured natural stone tumbled pebbles. A mid blue coloured glass was used in 40cm wide strips to establish the outline of the river with the infill water utilising a 10-15 mm Jade Green pebble. The land areas were created using a Black Jade pebble with the central arterial roads in the area set using Bushstone Red crushed recycled glass.

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Monument: Sydney roof top garden at podium level

The images below are of the extravagant Monument Apartments designed by Melbourne based Wood Marsh Architects in Sydney. The apartments feature a roof deck garden, which was created using Indo Black and Sulu Black array of the DecoR Pebble range.

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Mirvac Development: Melbourne

The images below represent the Four Tower 'Yarra's Edge' Mirvac Development in Melbourne, which was designed by Edaw Gillespies. a green roofscape was created using a combination of native grasses, crushed recycled glass and three decorative tumbled pebbles in white, black and claret red colours. Geometric patterns of pebbles and glass were l epoxy resin in a 20mm thickness on top of a 100mm bed of crushed rock. the PVC drainage mat was laid onto the waterproof membrane prior to the crushed rock being installed.

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Mirvac Development: Melbourne Towers 4 and 5

The design of these two roof decks is a perfect example of an intensive green roof. The two roof decks have been created using a combination of decorative pebbles and stones and different shrub and plant species.

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