Fire and Wind Standards for Green Roofs

Apartment dwellers at the Verdesian Building at the northern end of Battery Park City enjoy their remarkable green oasis 27 floors above the southwestern tip of Manhattan.

Green Roofs for Healthy Cities (GRHC) is partnering with the Single Ply Roofing Industry (SPRI) to develop wind and fire standards for green roofs. “By acting now to establish these minimum design standards we can relieve the concerns voiced by the construction industry without placing regulatory barriers on environmental stewardship,” explains Kelly Luckett, president of St. Louis, Miss.-based Green Roof Blocks and a member of the Green Roofs for Healthy Cities subcommittee that is helping develop the standards.

In April 2007, Waltham, MA-based SPRI held a meeting of key industrial players to plan for the development of the vegetative roof wind and fire standards. GRHC and the National Roofing Contractors Association attended the meeting and a second meeting in August 2007. The groups began canvassing the industry opinions on the proposed wind standard in September 2007, with the next round of canvass for the fire standard beginning in early 2008.

“SPRI was the logical choice to lead this standard development because of their diverse membership, technical expertise and being an approved ANSI canvasser,” said Dick Gillenwater of Carlisle SynTec Inc. and a member of SPRI and GRHC.

Mike Ennis, technical director, agrees. “SPRI’s knowledge of multiple green roof solutions and GRHC green roof knowledge … can give the construction industry the best of both worlds.”

Green Roofs for Healthy Cities–North America, Inc. was founded in 1999 as a not-for-profit network of association of green roof experts with the mission to increase the awareness of the economic, social and environmental benefits of green roofs, green walls and other forms of living landscape architecture.