Green roofs are a wonder of engineering, but it can be a labor-intensive process. But Express Blower, a manufacturer and distributor of pneumatic blowing equipment in Eugene, Ore., has a solution. By pairing up with pneumatic blower truck owners, contractors are saving time and money, and truck owners are expanding their services and increasing profit as well, said Jason Wedmore, national accounts manager of Express Blower.
With the U.S. being in the infancy of this growing trend, demand for green roof contractors, landscape architects and installers can be expected to grow as well, Wedmore said. When considering the application, an engineer must first determine if a building’s structure can accommodate the weight of being retrofitted with a green roof. Contractors choose the material and vegetation based on the customer’s needs and location, and after installing the initial waterproofing and drainage layers, they prepare and apply growing media to the roof.
“The greatest advances have been made in the process of applying the growing media,” he said. The old method — and the one still employed by a number of contractors — involves using a crane to hoist material to the roof, where a crew of workers uses wheelbarrows to haul, dump and spread it, making it as even as possible to ready it for plantings. A new method uses pneumatic blower trucks that park on the ground level and deliver materials to a building’s roof through a blower hose. A work crew simply drives the truck to the building, pulls the hose up to the rooftop and applies the material — aggregates, mulches, compost or any variety of soil blends for rooftop gardens — by blowing it smoothly and evenly across the needed location. Grid setups for pathways are no problem with the blower hose either. Depending on the truck specifications, the material and the project conditions, the product can be delivered straight up 150 feet or more.
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