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Towards smart green roofs

Environment | No comments |

Le Moniteur | Elsa Sidawy | 05.02.11

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une_toit-vegetal_110429
Today home automation is not limited to the interior of buildings anymore. Roofs are now the scene of various experimentations to bring a little bit of greenery within cities, regulate the temperature of buildings during summer and enable water retention in case of heavy rain. A firm has developed a solution to optimise watering management according to plants’ real needs on green roof installations.

No more unnecessary watering during heat waves due to timers flooding plants without taking into account their real water needs. The firm Tivao, born from a partnership between the firm Agralis and “The Mediterranean Green Spaces Company”, imagined a solution that could adapt watering to plants’ hydric stress.

corps_toit-vegetal_110429 To do so, during the installation of a green roof, sondes directly connected to a computer are fitted into the vegetation cover, Eric Leysens explains in his article published in Le Moniteur on the 17th February. They make real-time records of the humidity and salinity levels of the substrate on which vegetables are growing. Data are then interpreted by a software that has been developed and patented by Tivao. The system activates the opening of electric gates holding water and fertiliser as soon as plants need them. An anemometer can stop the watering in case of strong wind in order to avoid spraying water on the nearby buildings.

60 Euros per m2 for almost complete automation
Despite appearances, the services provided by the company still require to use human intervention. Indeed maintenance must be carried out twice a year, as for any similar installation, in order to weed and check that the system is functioning correctly. On the money side, the displayed rates fluctuate around 60 Euros per m2, including installation and one-year maintenance.
This innovation may encourage the creation of green roofs in the warmest regions of France, where the great need for watering can often be seen as an obstacle to their installation. In any case, François Arsac, executive officer of Tivao, hopes that his start-up will continue to grow for a long time in this buoyant yet new market.

Read also:
• Are cities saving bees?
• Chicago honored as one of the greenest cities in the world

Photo credits: EnviroZone (first page)/Tivao

To know more, please contact us at the following address contact@innovcity.com

Translated by Oona Bijasson

Related content : automation, green roof

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