Green roof maintenance: the maintenance-free roof is a myth the building manager pays for
Green roofs are sold as maintenance-free, but without care they’re overgrown with tree seedlings within a few years, the drains clog and the sedum thins out. You climb up several times a year, pull the seedlings, clear the drains, fill the bare patches and write a record of every visit for the building manager.
You offer regular maintenance of extensive green roofs on apartment blocks, office buildings, shopping centres, garages and family houses: removing tree seedlings and weeds, clearing drains and gravel strips, replanting bare patches, checking edges, penetrations and anchor points, and a record with photos. Green roofs are spreading and cities support them with subsidies. Whoever took a subsidy committed to looking after the roof: Prague, for example, explicitly requires that functional vegetation cover at least two thirds of the area for the full ten-year sustainability period. Building managers often don’t even know the roof needs any care. The catch: you work at height, so without anchor points or railings you mustn’t go up. And the waterproofing under the vegetation isn’t your job. When you find damage, you record it and recommend a specialist.
An extensive green roof with sedum is sold as maintenance-free. For a few years it seems true. Then a birch or willow takes root in the substrate, leaves and moss clog the drains, the bare patches grow and water stands where it shouldn’t.
💡 Why it works
🌱Green roofs are spreading
Cities support green roofs with subsidies and developers and companies build them. Every new roof is a future maintenance customer, for years.
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