Measuring Green Roof Performance

BOURNE, Mass. — Often times when companies decide to “go green” by using sustainable building methods, they want to have a record of the installation’s performance in order to document their investment. Now, Onset, the world’s leading supplier of data loggers, is showing end-users how to calculate the savings from their green roof with its recently published best practices guide, Monitoring Green Roof Performance with Weather Stations.

The 12-page guide discusses the importance of monitoring and documenting green roof performance and explains how data logging weather stations can help measure stormwater runoff, improve irrigation scheduling, and help maintain healthy rooftop vegetation.

The guide also includes tips and guidance on selecting and deploying weather stations for green roof monitoring projects.

Green roof projects have become increasingly popular with commercial buildings and educational facilities, especially in urban environments. The recent installation of a green roof at a New York school has everyone around excited and eager to see the results.

“Green roofs mean a greener New York,” said New York State Sen. Daniel Squadron in a statement. “The new Fifth Street Farm Project is a big step toward ensuring that our kids can learn, grow, and eat in a way that serves their health and environment, while setting a low-cost example that can be replicated around the city.”

While projects are continuing to sprout on top of city buildings, owners want to see that their ideas have merit for the future, and there is no other way to determine the success without measuring its performance.

Data logging weather stations are the ideal tools for documenting green roof performance. A weather station can measure weather parameters such as rainfall, stormwater runoff, temperature, relative humidity, wind speed, solar radiation, and a host of non-weather parameters such as soil moisture on a continuous basis, according to Onset.

Weather stations are typically mounted on a metal tripod and run on battery or solar power in order to efficiently track a green roof’s performance.

The weather stations eliminate human error from data monitoring and can be counted on to collect unattended readings all day, every day. Operators can download data remotely or manually, and use data logging software to configure, retrieve and analyze information from the station.

In order to make the most of the data retrieved, most weather stations are equipped with accompanying graphing and analysis software that allows users to set configuration parameters and offload data. The most sophisticated packages allow users to combine graphs to compare data among systems, according to Onset.

The information that a weather station collects can help the end-user make smarter choices when it comes to designing and maintaining a green roof.