A View from the Sky Trenches http://www.greenroofs.com/sky_trenches.

htm

A View from the Sky Trenches

August 2005
Green Roof Activism or We are All Bozos on This Bus.
Firesign Theatre

By Patrick Carey
All Photos Courtesy Patrick Carey unless otherwise noted.

On the one hand green roofs are the fastest growing segment of
the roofing market. On the other they are microscopic in terms of
public familiarity and widespread use. We wait. We wait for the
definitive book that will describe exactly how to design and build
one that is perfect, tell us exactly how much it will cost, and exactly how it will behave over
the 40-60+ year life span. We wait for the studies to come out on storm water, thermal
performance, etc. We wait for our neighbor down the street to get one first. We wait for
enough of them to be built so that we can take tours of all of them and see for ourselves
what the pictures and words are all about. We wait while the Germans and Japanese make
it a standard of construction. We wait while the trades in other countries learn to actually talk
to each other. We wait for the incentive programs and the grants. We wait to overcome our
unspoken fears.

I can’t help but wonder if there isn’t some

psycho-pathology at work. This roofing approach
has been around since ancient Iraq. The modern
evolution of it has been around since the late
1970’s. At some mysterious point enough
adventurous people will just spontaneously start
building green roofs and that will be the
beginning of the sea of change. This hasn’t
happened yet.

But there are signs. D.C. Greenworks in

Washington, D.C., Northwest EcoBuilding Guild
in Seattle, Ecoroofs Everywhere in Portland, OR,
This garage decided not to wait for humans, and other experimenters and advocates in
grants, or incentives - just the perfect set of Chicago, Minneapolis, New York, Vancouver,
climatic conditions, etc., and it developed its B.C., and Austin, Texas are throwing up green
own green roof. Moss grew spontaneously roofs. Some leak, some have all the plants die,
on this roof -completely the result of neglect.
some work beautifully, some would make a
The implication being that green roofs are
going to happen with or without us so we green roof designer cringe or a roofer shake
might as well help out the process. his/her head. But they are going up. When they
Examining these kinds of things closely can screw up, the next ones are better. When they
teach you a great deal about how green work, they are replicated. When there is no
roofs operate. money, they make them small. When there is
money, they get larger.

It’s all happening now and accelerating. So here are some examples and ideas to jump-start
a green roof movement in your area. You might look at it this way: how bad a failure can you
tolerate? And then operate within those limits. I'm not talking about installing your home or
business with a green roof on the first go. Start small and go from there.

Example # 1: Tom Liptan in Portland, Oregon, now known to very many people as a green
roof resource and advocate, shoveled some backyard dirt on his garage metal roof over a
sheet of visqueen, threw some seeds on it, watered it and then measured and observed it
over a 9 year period. No cost, no grant, no public incentive, not even a particularly great
design. But from that experiment sprung a green roof movement in Portland.

1 of 7 4/12/2007 10:32 AM
A View from the Sky Trenches http://www.greenroofs.com/sky_trenches.htm

See Tom Liptan's Garage in The Greenroof Projects

Database

Example #2: Jon Alexander, a member of the NW EcoBuilding Guild in Seattle, volunteered
an old garage. A bunch of fellow members volunteered to do some research on the net.
They got a few donations of free materials from companies who either wanted to get some
cheap market development or advertising, and they gave it a shot. Now they have 20 green
roofs up and running on structures from chicken coops to complete single-family residences.

The Alexander garage. Photo by LSV.

Publisher's Note: Read more about the NW
EcoBuilding Guild in Patrick's 2003 Guest
Feature Article here. Read about Seattle
greenroof activity in Linda's Aug/Sep 2004
Sky Gardens column here.

Example #3: In Chicago, with a mayor touting the benefits of green roofs, a small group
started exploring the possibility of green roofs by starting out with models shown to some
landscape people, and then built some small structures with green roofs.

Example #4: In Victoria, British Columbia two fellows with dreams of a small landscape
business attended a green roof conference in Portland, worked with a green roof
design/build business for a few projects, and helped them with a few workshops. Adam Weir
and Liam Hall of Paradise CityScapes took what they learned to design and build small
greenroofs on accessory structures in Victoria.

2 of 7 4/12/2007 10:32 AM
A View from the Sky Trenches http://www.greenroofs.com/sky_trenches.htm

Left: Adam Weir and Liam Hall starting out a multi-level cathouse with green roof. Right: Josh
Powers demonstrating EPDM membrane application for a doghouse.

Example #5: In our nation's capitol, D.C. Greenworks uses training on green roofs and other
activities as a way to help people get job skills. Because greenroofs involve a wide variety of
skills form landscaping to carpentry to roofing to metal work, to (and this is the important
part) making them all work together, trainees come out of this program with a wide range of
skills. As they work in the community, they bring with them the skill and understanding of
green roofs that private house project people tap into.

Read about 1425 K Street

above in The Greenroof
Projects Database. Photo
Courtesy D.C Greenworks.
Publisher's Note: Read about
D.C Greenworks in director
Dawn Gifford's August 2003
Guest Feature Article here.

Example #6: In Austin, Texas, a homeowner read about green roofs and thought he might
try one on his property. Auten imitated the scrub pine and cactus landscape surrounding his
house, made a small roof and put it at the entrance to his property.

Example #7 Ecoroofs Everywhere in Portland got volunteers together, hooked up with some
grants and some skilled roofers and started putting up green roofs. They have about 10 up
so far.

Ecoroofs Everywhere came up with this inexpensive drainage detail. One of many
ways to drain a green roof. Illustration by Steve Cowden/The Oregonian. Publisher's
Note: Read about Ecoroofs Everywhere in founding member Anthony Roy's November
2003 Guest Feature Article here. See the Hawthorne Hostel ecoroof above in The
Greenroof Projects Database.

3 of 7 4/12/2007 10:32 AM
A View from the Sky Trenches http://www.greenroofs.com/sky_trenches.htm

Greenroof Projects Database.

There are many examples I have not listed here. There are design-build classed offered by
Colleges and Junior colleges that have taken classes out and built green roofs; classes
offering green roof education are common in Japan. As soon as the right mixture of skill sets
is reached and coordinated, a green roof skill-building workshop can take place. There are
more than enough literature and information sources about this subject right now.

Here are some ideas:

Get on any of the green roof websites (those not

selling products or services might be more
objective) and study up on assemblies. Advertise
on craigslist.org for free building materials like
plywood, pond liner, framing lumber, single ply
roofing membrane scraps (or contact local
commercial roofing companies or go to
commercial roofing construction sites). I had a
friend who would always counsel me on “ the
best “ stereo equipment, another example of the
high-tech world of computer software/hardware,
cell phones and services. His theory was to wait
because some really huge improvement was just
Jeff Jaramillo demonstrating TPO around the corner. His passion to get the
technique. ultra-first of its
kind-prototype-future-advanced-totally up-to-date
thing prevented him from actually getting anything and then moving on from there. If anyone
puts aside 30 days and reads the four major publications on green roofs, the three CD’s of
the past three Green Roof conferences in the U.S., and goes through two or three good
green roof websites, you will know as much as 90% of all the green roof experts and
practitioners around. Most of the people and companies who promote themselves as
experts are expert in usually only one or two aspects of a green roof and leave the rest to
consultants they hire.

MAKE FRIENDS WITH A ROOFER!

Student trying her hand at EPDM membrane
application.
can be one of the growing numbers of people who make their recipes secret. You can come
up with exotic names like “ Roof Dirt 257.“
(Someone who is familiar with single ply
membranes.) They do not have to know a
plant from a car. If you can’t, then get a
single piece big enough so you don’t have
to cut or seam it. You don’t have to be a
non-profit or an institution or anything else
just someone who wants to build a green
roof. You can get an old dog house, a bird
house, a cat house, anything with a
plywood roof and build it up to make a
shallow trough and then line it with pond
liner from Home Depot, or visqueen. Next,
get few small piles (¼ cubic yard – sized
piles) of growth medium ingredients like
pumice, lava rock, compost, coco fiber,
(experiment and get to about 10% organic
to 90% mineral in the mix). If it works, you

Go to a construction site where they are doing foundation work and get some sub-surface
drain mat. Now make a roof with some plywood 2x framing on the edges for a shallow
planter, line it with your pond liner, or roofing scraps, lay down the drain mat, fill it about 4-6
inches with your “Roof Dirt 257,“ throw some seeds on it and you have a green roof. That is
it! Will it be the best green roof, the most advanced, the longer lasting, the only one of its
kind? No. It might even leak or fall down. All the plants might die. “What if it rains too
much?” “What if I don’t have the right plants?” “What if the stock market crashes again?”
“What happens if the bird flu reaches the U.S.?” "What happens if the Cubans invade
Florida?” LIGHTEN UP!!! This will not make you a green roof expert. But it will put you in

4 of 7 4/12/2007 10:32 AM
A View from the Sky Trenches http://www.greenroofs.com/sky_trenches.htm

the game. Once you have a few of these up, they will be your teachers.

Going to a Home Depot or Lowe's or

other big box store might get you a
donated Tuff-Shed, or other
prefabricated small, low liability
structure like dog houses, kiddie
play houses, bird houses, etc. There
are tons of plans for building these
things yourself on the web. Now that
you have your act together, map out
your city and figure where you can
replicate this process so that many
different kinds of people get to see
them. What is the worst thing that
could happen if you make one and
put it in front of City Hall – take a
bunch of photos, of course. How
Tuff-Shed retrofit by Northwest EcoBuilding Guild
about a homeless encampment?
volunteers. How about a tool shed for a public
garden? A bus stop? Anything that
can benefit from a roof or a canopy can get a green roof. If you are nervous about the
structure, make a small one and replicate it. Get someone with an official stamp to pass on
it.

Monitoring: showing how they work can be of public benefit – think of the educational angle.
All you need is a science class, a playground with a small green roof, a $2.00 rain gauge
and a 5-gallon bucket or 55 gallon rain barrel with a closed top attached to a downspout.
You now have a storm water monitoring station. City and county governments love this type
of information because it can set storm water policy. A college engineering/architecture
class doing acoustical tests on it, a local roofers union doing an apprentice training on single
ply membrane application, a local horticultural group doing some plant and growth media
experiments, and you have a movement.

Green roofing is not rocket science at first. It is

simple as dirt at first. After your first experience
with it the nuances and subtleties will come into
play. But these will be in the form of improvements,
not in the form of being able to do it at all. A
defining quality of an activist is to be active. Sartre
spoke of having to destroy the world in order to act
in it. I took him to mean that the point at which one
takes action is the like jumping off a diving board.
To act means to ignore all that you know, stop
letting the way things are now and the security you
feel in they’re never changing in unknown ways;
Fashioning some drainage. hold back the impulse to create. The worst thing
that can happen is, God forbid, you make a
mistake!

Example of what you might hear from a conservative: "For heaven’s sake! Don’t try this at
home!!!" illustrating the hesitancy to experiment on the type of ultra-unsophisticated green
roof model prototype that I am talking about.

5 of 7 4/12/2007 10:32 AM
A View from the Sky Trenches http://www.greenroofs.com/sky_trenches.htm

A small kiosk built during a workshop.

Now imagine a group of previously green roof-ignorant people who have made the leap.
They tried and failed about 3-4 times. But the fifth time was a charm and they actually got
that green roofed doghouse to look like something. The skills they learned in carpentry,
roofing, horticulture, and green roofing in general now are grounded in the homework they
have done with the literature in the field. Now they are players. They can ask more insightful
questions, the skills they learn are now more sophisticated and focused, the people they go
to for help are familiar with their projects. They do a few presentations to a few groups
around the town, explaining green roofs in general and showing the experiments they have
done. All of a sudden somebody wants them to do a workshop at their house and in the
process build them a green roof. They become green roof guerillas and do things like put a
4’ x 8’ green roof panel on the roof of a local office building, a school, and a park. The more
they do, the more they learn, the sharper their skills are honed, etc. Now they teach others
and plan a possible start up business. Voila! Green Roof Activism.

Left: A green roof retrofit on a straw bale structure; Right: A green roofed chicken coop. Egg
production was documented as a 23% increase. (This is a lie.)

Some words of good or bad advice, as much as you should summon up courage for tackling
the unknown, you should fear yourself as much. In the 6 years I have been green roofing I
have witnessed in some, usually those who are the most distanced from actual green roof
projects, a kind of turf mentality. Those people claim credit for the work of others, claim
expertise they do not have, and seek to take advantage of a field that is still new and
relatively rare. They come in all forms, the plant nursery worker who attended one workshop
and now knows everything needed to consult on green roofs, the academic who is in love
with his or her research technique or theory, the green roof system sales person who is
pushing the product of his/her company, the landscape architect who assumes that his/her
training alone is all that is needed to claim expertise, the architect who visited the actual site
twice – first to introduce the green roof installers to the client and second to photograph the
result and is now giving lectures on green roofs as though he/she had done any serious
homework, the do-it-yourselfer who has stopped exploring beyond his/her project and
figures he/she can now stop learning. I have seen a lot of attitude-copping, even in the
mirror, and I deplore it. It gets in the way.

There is a kind of greed out there, and green roofs are the next item on the menu. There is
notoriety, publication, media interviews; press coverage, grants and awards given out that
can all conspire to force you to miss the point: The roof is the expert, not you. I would trust
people who have both dirt under their fingernails and a well-worn pair of reading glasses
over those who appear with various mantles of expertise. THERE ARE NO GREEN ROOF
EXPERTS! There are only those who have a disciplined passion for the subject and those
whose appetite for notoriety and future business exceeds their ability and knowledge.

~ Patrick Carey

6 of 7 4/12/2007 10:32 AM
A View from the Sky Trenches http://www.greenroofs.com/sky_trenches.htm

~ Patrick Carey

Patrick Carey is an architect in Seattle, WA, and his background is in Philosophy,

Architecture, and Professional Theatre. Director of the Northwest EcoBuilding
Guild's Green Roof Project for over five years, Patrick is also principal of hadj design,
a green roof design-build company. hadj has designed and installed over 50 green
roofs that range in size from chicken coops to complete houses to commercial
installations. hadj design has pioneered the cross-training of its crews in all aspects
of green roof installation and has taken on the challenge of getting green roofs of all
scales up and running.

7 of 7 4/12/2007 10:32 AM