When one talks about having a green roof, images of a rooftop garden would usually come to mind. This isn’t necessarily wrong, but we must expand our perspective on what a green roof truly is.

Green roofs, apart from being conventionally green with vegetation, can also mean using other sustainability strategies such as having a drainage system or catchment area for rainwater, and creating roofdeck spaces with permeable hardscapes. Of course, we must not forget the protective properties of roofs in considering a green roof.

Reeling from last week’s PhilConstruct Expo, let us look into the importance of the roof and how it affects heat transfer within the building envelope. The roof would receive most of the sun’s radiant heat at around 47%, thus this would be the main focal point for reducing urban heat island effect. Because of this, the concept of greening the roof flourished as a way to combat this phenomenon. The plants on the rooftop would act as insulation for the building envelope, thus less energy would be needed to moderate indoor temperature.

One heat mitigation strategy to consider is the use of reflective roof coatings. These type of roof coating would often come in white, as this color proves to be the most reflective to sunlight. On the get go, the amount of heat transmitted through the roof coating would be reduced drastically from its reflective property. Compared to integrating rooftop vegetation, which also consumes large amounts of water in its maintenance, reflective roofs would be a simpler yet sustainable way to yield energy savings. By using products such as TOPPS roof coating, the heat entering the building can be reduced by 10-15°C, especially in a tropical climate such as ours.

With its long lasting properties and little requirement for maintenance, using TOPPS would embody the sense of a sustainable product for your building needs. This claim is further backed up by building energy efficiency stakeholders/programs such as Energy Star, the Cool Roof Rating Council (CRRC), as well as the United States Green Building Council (USGBC). As a proud distributor of TOPPS, GreenSolutions aims to provide simple yet effective ways to improve sustainability in the built environment.