The green roof manual : a professional guide to design, installation, and maintenance / Edmund C. Snodgrass and Linda McIntyre.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 279-291) and index.

1. Green roof basics -- What is green roof? -- Green roof benefits -- A brief history of green roofs -- Will green roofs remain a small niche, or are their numbers likely to increase?

2. Anatomy of a green roof assembly -- The living part of the green roof: growing medium -- The living part of the green roof: plants -- Non-green aspects of green roofs: loading, waterproofing, and drainage.

3. State of the industry -- Buyer beware -- Guidelines and standards -- Research and testing -- Professional and industry information -- Risk assessment -- Third-party certification -- Accreditation -- Green roof economics and the role of incentives -- Integrating green roofs into regulations and policy.

4. Designing and building your green roof -- The design process -- The installation process -- Green roof design paradigms: simple extensive green roofs -- Green roof design paradigms: green roofs as amenity spaces -- Green roof design paradigms: specialty green roofs -- Special design considerations and challenges.

5. Maintaining your green roof -- Green roof maintenance basics -- Weeds: the first order of maintenance business -- Maintaining plant and soil health -- Maintaining the non-green elements of a green roof -- When maintenance isn't enough.

Green roofs -- the ultimate in sustainable building practices -- continue to generate enormous interest and enthusiasm among architects, landscape designers, and urban planners. Increasingly strict stormwater regulations and the appeal of LEED-related projects have also boosted the popularity and desirability of green roofs. Those who want to build green roofs, however, have few resources to guide them. Until now, no book has taken a comprehensive look at how to effectively adapt green-roof technology to the variable and extreme North American climate, and how to design projects that will function and endure as successfully as those in Germany, Switzerland, and other European countries.

This book fills the gap by providing an overview of practices and techniques that have been effective in North America. The authors offer options regarding structure, function, horticulture, and logistics, as well as surveys of actual projects and analyses of why they have or haven't succeeded. Approachable and reader-friendly, the manual clearly explains how these complex systems function and how to plan and carry out projects successfully from concept through construction and maintenance. Ideally suited to professionals (including architects, landscape architects, engineers, and designers) and their clients, it brings together key lessons from leaders in the field. Numerous photographs highlight the range of design possibilities and show green roofs both during construction and at various stages of maturity. At last, those seeking basic information about how to design and build green roofs have a concise, authoritative guide to this exciting new technology.