Blue roof

A blue roof is a roof design that is explicitly intended to store water, typically rainfall. Blue roofs can provide a number of benefits depending on design. These benefits include temporary storage of rainfall to mitigate runoff impacts, storage for reuse such as irrigation or cooling water makeup, or recreational opportunities. Blue roofs can include open water surfaces, storage within or beneath a porous media or modular surface, or below a raised decking surface or cover. Blue roofs that are used for temporary rooftop storage can be classified as "active" or "passive" depending on the types of control devices used to regulate drainage of water from the roof.

Some recreational blue roofs integrate rooftop waterplay areas that can also be used to irrigate a green roof, or to cool the roof of a building on hot days, in order to eliminate or at least reduce the HVAC load placed on mechanical refrigeration equipment.

Some recreational blue roof designs include such features as an ecoshower, outdoor shower, waterplay sculpture, misting spray, or splash pad, and may include other ecologically friendly features such as renewable energy (wind, solar, etc.).

Blue roofs are often privately owned, and make efficient use of the otherwise very limited space available in the urban core of a highly populated city.

Examples of blue roofs

One example of a blue roof is the [http://wearcam.org/urbine "urbeach/urbine"] (located on Dundas Street West, in downtown Toronto). A rooftop mounted wind turbine in which the main mast is a shower pole forms the centerpiece of this blue roof. The beach surface is a textured nonslip surface that provides good traction when wet. The roof is decorated with blue chips that are solar cells that provide energy to the building, as well as run all of the urbeach amenities. Some of the highly integrated building photovoltaics on this roof also function as sunbathing areas, in which solar louvres break up the sunlight into a dappled sunlight akin to sunbathing under a sparse tree. This provides sunbathers with the optimum mixture of sun and shade, as urbeachers may desire varying strengths of sunlight, and can these users can move around to find the best mix of sun and shade, under the louvres. The louvres themselves are solar panels that provide energy to the building.

Additionally, solar awnings give passive solar shading of the windows while producing further electrical energy as well.

Presently, other blue roofs are being proposed for the Bahen building, and the Best building, at the University of Toronto. A series of blueroof designs were presented at the "urbeach/urbine" conference held on the Dundas Street urbeach. The conference was attended by numerous company representatives, as well as officials from the City of Toronto, including Olivia Chow and Tony Iano.

External links

* [http://wearcam.org/urbine/urbeach/ Urbeach: from sand to silicon in the sun]