Green roofs offer a number of benefits. First, a pleasant place appears where you can take a break from the daily hustle and bustle and be alone with nature, without leaving your home, business center or public building. Secondly, a green roof improves the quality of life and saves money: it gets warmer in the building in winter and cooler in summer, respectively, reducing heating and air conditioning costs. By the way, installing a green roof costs from several tens to several hundred euros per square meter - it is cheaper than buying a piece of urban land and planting a garden on it.
The city also receives dividends: a significant part of the rainwater remains in the ground on the roofs, so the load on storm sewers is reduced. In addition, the more green roofs there are, the easier it is to breathe. The German Building Code and the Federal Nature Conservation Act state that negative environmental impacts must be prevented, minimized or compensated for. Therefore, in order to maintain a global balance, it was decided in Stuttgart to create green roofs to replace the plots of land “removed” from the natural environment during the construction of new buildings.
From 1986 to 2009, 66,000 m2 of new green roofs were built in Stuttgart, which is the equivalent of 9 football pitches. Many projects have been implemented ZinCo - a leader in the field of roof gardening. The head office of the company, which has more than fifty branches around the world, is located just outside Stuttgart, and on the roofs of this city, ZinCo implements interesting and technically challenging projects.
In 2002, a project was implemented to create a green roof on the school building in the campus Unterenzingen near Stuttgart. Extensive landscaping was carried out, involving the creation of a relatively thin soil layer based on the Floraset FS 50 drainage technology and the planting of lichens and sedum (sedum) - unpretentious low-growing plants that are not demanding on soil quality and tolerate drought well.
A solid floral carpet of yellow, red and white sedums (Sedum Carpet Technology) was chosen for the school roof. The soil layer was only 6 cm, which reduced the load on the roof to the minimum possible when using the green roof system - 150 kg per m2 (in addition to this, possible loads from rain, snow, etc. must be added). Since the safety margin of the roof was not exhausted by this, it became possible to additionally install solar panels on it.
In the same year, ZinCo carried out a rooftop landscaping shopping center MAG Galleries in Geislingen near Stuttgart. On a total area of 8000 m2, it was decided to use an extensive-intensive approach, which combines green "carpets" and higher vegetation. An impressive layer of soil (from 30 to 100 cm) and a drainage system Floradrain FD 40 made it possible to create real gardens on the roof, indistinguishable from "earthly" ones. The townspeople received a new recreation area with green lawns, children's and basketball courts. The roof is not high, and thanks to its easy access (there are elevators, stairs, ramps), it turned out to fit it into the urban environment.
In 2008, ZinCo specialists greened the roof of the new building of the insurance company WGV - Versicherungenlocated in the central part of Stuttgart. The drainage technology Stabilodrain SD 30 was used here. In addition, 4 courtyards with a total area of 1650 m2 were arranged for customers and employees. A total of 58 small trees were planted. The flowerbeds, which are about a meter high, do not need watering: irrigation pipes are laid under the concrete floor slabs, giving the plants the required amount of water.
For quite a long time, from 2006 to 2009, the work on creating a green roof for a residential complex Blue Garden in the city of Ostfildern near Stuttgart. The house is located in a new area called Scharnhauser Park, where the military unit of the US Army was located until 1992. Today Scharnhauser Park is becoming a model quarter of modern Germany: a grant from the European Union allows the construction of energy-efficient buildings there and the creation of renewable energy sources.
Of course, during the construction of the Blue Garden residential complex, compliance with environmental standards was also of paramount importance. If you go up to the roof of the parking today, you will see the modern snow-white facades of the house, in front of which there are lawns, bushes and trees grow. On the playground, located there, an artificial stream originates, where excess water flows from the drainage-accumulating layer, created using the Floradrain FD 60 technology with a mineral filler. It flows through the entire roof (over 70 meters in length) and flows into a small pond.
In the grandiose plan for greening roofs, ZinCo did not pass by and own officelocated 20 km from Stuttgart in the city of Nürtingen … In 2012-2013, a green space was created on the roof of the underground parking at the ZinCo headquarters for employees to rest and as a model of the company's work that can be shown to customers.
The management of ZinCo decided to entrust the development of landscape design of the roof not to a third-party bureau, but to employees of its own technical department. They proceeded from the need to preserve the existing orchard and the desire to make an attractive object that would be easy to get to. As a result, we settled on zigzag paths located at an angle of 45 ° to the office building standing next to it. An area with a lawn that can be used for events has been created, as well as an area where fruits, vegetables and herbs are grown for employees. The roof of the office itself also turned green, in addition to this, solar panels were installed on it, turning them at the same angle of 45 °, which made it possible to orient them to the south.
As in Germany, in Russia ZinCo is engaged in landscaping the roofs of business centers and private houses, carrying out a full cycle of work by its own specialists, without resorting to third-party contractors. TsinCo RUS is a member of the National Roofing Union of Russia, the Union of Architects of Russia, the Association of Builders of Russia and actively uses ZinCo technologies at Russian facilities. Material provided by the company "Tsinko RUS"
Green Roof Systems, this building shows the full range!
If you want to start our new projectvideo directly from this page, now you are able to do it. Posted by ZinCo GmbH on Tuesday, 1 September 2015
