Syracuse (WSYR-TV) - It may seem a little odd, but designers can see green roofing catching on -- and for very good reason. It's why two very different buildings locally will feature it.
The new Center of Excellence building downtown and a section of the Onondaga County Jail in Jamesville will feature roofs truly green, and will be watched by cities across the U.S. and the world.
"All of these older cities have, just like Syracuse, sewers that combine the storm sewer with the sanitary sewer and when it rains bad things can happen, it can overflow," says Ed Bogucz of the Center of Excellence.
So on its uniquely designed lower roof, the COE will include just one of its many green features.
"Right now we are watering it because they are brand new clippings, but after a while it will survive on it's own, occasionally weeding, occasionally fertilizing, but it will live all by itself," says Dan Cannan of Carlisle, the company that manufactured the roof.
They call it a green roof, but at the COE, for instance, there are different varieties of plants on the roof; some of them will be green, some of them won't.
“We can tell how much rain water the vegetative roof absorbs, how much heat it transfers through to the building, how much cold it's transferring," says Peter Larson of Ashley McGraw Architects.
The jail will actually use monitors to keep track of the four different kinds of roofing being tried in Jamesville. They include the green roof, which should be installed in early September to see what works best there, and what might work best in all of the county's many buildings.
People from around the world will watch the experiment here and at the new COE building, which is aimed at keeping all the rainwater out of the sewer system and right at the property.
"The green roof acts like a sponge, so when it rains the roof absorbs the moisture, it holds the moisture there on the roof,” Bogucz says. “The plants drink that water, and then plants do what plants do -- they let it back into the atmosphere."
Both the COE designers and those behind the jail project say the green roof is the way the world is going now. The COE will also be collecting rainwater from the top roof, storing it in a large tank and using the water to flush the toilets.
