Green roof is a specialized roofing system that supports vegetation growth on rooftops. This technology is rapidly gaining popularity in North America as a sustainable design option. Green roofs offer multiple benefits to urban areas such as reduction of heating/cooling needs for the building, urban heat island and stormwater runoff for the region. In this study, the performance of two extensiv...

The U,S. Army Construction Engineering Research Laboratories (CERL) has been investigating the development of a test methodology for evaluating the service life of roofing membrane materials. As pat of this effort, CERL conducted a study to investigate the applicability of strain energy (a mechanical test) and Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy (a chemicat analysis) as methods for c...

Design frequently involves a series of tradeoffs to obtain the “optimal” solution to a design problem. Green roofs have many different characteristics based on a variety of variables. Designers typically weigh the impacts of these characteristics in an implicit process based on intuition or past experience. But since vegetated roofing is a relatively complex and comparatively new technology to ...

Despite its seismic activity, Chile has a large number of heritage buildings built with earth. Their conservation depends on elements such as roofing and foundations, but also the quality renders finishing materials. This study seeks to identify characterize coating systems materials used wall surfaces earthen structures in Limarí valley, Chile, seeking contribute dissemination, promotion, pres...

This paper presents an overview of observed distresses on low slope roofing systems collected for the Building Envelope Life Cycle Asset Management (BELCAM) project. The data include over 14,000 visible distresses from 600 roofs from seven different climatic regions across Canada. The distresses encountered for built up roofs, modified bituminous roofs and a limited number of single-ply roofing...

Nineteen different commercially available samples containing naturally occurring radioactive materials (NORM) (i.e., natural uranium, thorium, radium and potassium) were investigated, including zircon sand, cat litter, roofing tiles, ice melt and fertilizer among others. A large variation in isotopic composition was observed across the measured samples. As a result of this observation, a need w...

The global freshwater and energy crisis have prompted worldwide investments in rainwater harvesting and solar energy systems. As the implementation of these two systems develops concurrently, they can easily become integrated into one rooftop structure. Photovoltaic systems have the potential to leach heavy metals and other toxins from newly installed, broken or aged modules. Since the type of ...

This paper deals with the application of Bayesian methods to the estimation of two convective heat transfer coefficients of a roof-mounted radiant barrier system (RBS). As part of an empirical validation of the thermal model of the roofing complex, a parametric sensitivity analysis highlighted the importance of convective coefficients in the thermal behavior of a roofing complex. A parameter es...