Green Roof in Mérida
As I await new designs from the architects and ride out the days of coronavirus, my mind wanders.
One of the things it wanders to is green roofs. I know that Mérida suffers from the heat-island effect. Most cities do, but Mérida is especially vulnerable just because it's already a furnace in the summers.
I won't bore you with an in-depth explanation of the heat-island effect, there are resources on the internet that can do a better job. The simplest explanation, it's when trees and greenery that can soak up or block the rays from the sun are taken away and replaced with concrete and blacktop which heats up in the and radiates that heat back out. Causing areas (usually cities) to be hotter than the surrounding countryside.
Our lot right now is all trees and grass. Like a mini-park walled up in the city. It worries me to build a house which would be tearing up that grass and replacing it with more concrete.
Our hope is to not have to remove any trees, so we should be good there. Any trees that do have to be taken down (and there are a few that simply don't look healthy) will be replaced.
But that still leaves the roof. Look at Mérida from a satellite image and you see sprawling white concrete roofs. Back out a ways and you see a concrete island in the middle of a swath of green.
Some of our roof I would like to have solar panels, of course. If we could run panels and have a good battery system in place to take care of nearly all of our energy needs, that would be amazing.
But the entire roof won't be solar panels, I don't assume. So what about all that extra bare concrete?
Well, that's where I hope a green roof can come in. It will probably require a little extra engineering to make sure it can handle the weight of plants, dirt and the rainwater they will soak up. But it will provide the benefit of insulating the house from the hot sun, prevent a lot of rapid runoff in the rainy season and just generally be good for the environment.
If this is possible to do on our house, and maybe it isn't and I'm just pie-in-the-sky daydreaming here, it won't fix Mérida's heat island problem. We're just a tiny speck in the city. But, hopefully, this way we won't be adding to the problem.
One of the things it wanders to is green roofs. I know that Mérida suffers from the heat-island effect. Most cities do, but Mérida is especially vulnerable just because it's already a furnace in the summers.
I won't bore you with an in-depth explanation of the heat-island effect, there are resources on the internet that can do a better job. The simplest explanation, it's when trees and greenery that can soak up or block the rays from the sun are taken away and replaced with concrete and blacktop which heats up in the and radiates that heat back out. Causing areas (usually cities) to be hotter than the surrounding countryside.
Our lot right now is all trees and grass. Like a mini-park walled up in the city. It worries me to build a house which would be tearing up that grass and replacing it with more concrete.
Our hope is to not have to remove any trees, so we should be good there. Any trees that do have to be taken down (and there are a few that simply don't look healthy) will be replaced.
But that still leaves the roof. Look at Mérida from a satellite image and you see sprawling white concrete roofs. Back out a ways and you see a concrete island in the middle of a swath of green.
Some of our roof I would like to have solar panels, of course. If we could run panels and have a good battery system in place to take care of nearly all of our energy needs, that would be amazing.
But the entire roof won't be solar panels, I don't assume. So what about all that extra bare concrete?
If this is possible to do on our house, and maybe it isn't and I'm just pie-in-the-sky daydreaming here, it won't fix Mérida's heat island problem. We're just a tiny speck in the city. But, hopefully, this way we won't be adding to the problem.
I am looking into this too. Have you gone by the parque scientifico? They seem to have green roofs on a few of their buildings though from the road, I don't see how some of the vegetation survives through the dryer months.
ReplyDeleteOur architects said it's not a super viable thing to do. Basically, you would have to irrigate in the dry months to keep it alive. We stayed at a house that had a rooftop garden, they used all succulents, but they also had an irrigation system set up there. So, until we actually move down there full time, it's probably not something we'll do right now.
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