This is a small green roof on a modern house in Sydenham Hill. It uses white painted railway sleepers for a frame to match the fascia boards on the house and I think fits in very well.
SYdenham hill green roof
Category Archives: Construction
Hackney retrofit green roof
This was a really cool extension using reclaimed materials in Hackney. The green roof was a bit tricky to photograph but you can see the effect of the plants blowing in the wind above the skylight.
Green roof on a bike shed
This is a project I completed back in October, secure cycle storage and a green roof. The client wanted secure storage in the front garden without having a big ugly box taking up all the space for planting and we came up with this elegant solution.
As the shed is on the way into the house we planted a number of different herbs which can be easily picked when you are on the way home and also release a scent if you brush past. These were combined with some flowering plants (it was October so not much available) and sedums. The whole roof was also sown with wildflower seeds so should be quite productive in the spring. There are saffron crocus bulbs underneath which may start to appear in late summer.
The bike shed itself has capacity for 2 bikes but there is a larger 4 bike version or these can be put side by side for multiples. To order.
This type of roof can be more easily accessed by the householder so we can try and create a slightly more formal garden than I would on a normal green roof as you can change the plants around and water and feed them if it is necessary.
The green roof itself has a fleece at the bottom then a drainage layer of aerated clay pebbles before the soil, here to about 125mm depth but the sheds are pretty tough so this could be bigger if required. The sleepers look really good but an alternative would be cobbles in gabion cages depending on what would fit with your front garden. Order page.
My Shabbihaus eco retrofit project part 4 living wall insulation
Dry air in the house is a good achievement but I have also been worrying about the pollution levels. Two of the three air intakes are located above the back garden and the front one has some good tree coverage between it and the road but it is still a busy traffic area. This made me look at some alternative ways of cleaning the air, I did some googling and came across the NASA research project on houseplants and their impact on air quality. Now before I go any further I do realise that these were controlled tests and we would also need a very large number of plants to get a big impact but I figure it can’t hurt and what I made looks great.
I have been keen to do something with reclaimed wood and also to add some extra insulation to the flank wall in the kids bedroom so I got a bit carried away here and produced this wall made from old pallets with 50mm of woodfibre insulation behind it. I was a bit nervous about this project as it has a bit more of a design impact than some of the other projects, it’s been in a while now though and I am so pleased with the outcome visually.
The first thing we did was tour the streets collecting abandoned pallets. I found that ones that were slightly broken already were better as they are easier to dismantle than really well built ones. The kids really enjoyed the collection process and I also got them to stain some of the planks we extracted to add some variety to the wall.
Next step was to get hold of some wood fibre insulation, not so easy for small quantities but thanks to https://phstore.co.uk/ for arranging it for me, delivery costs almost the same as the insulation in small quantities but cheaper than elsewhere and charming service too. I then fixed some 50mm battens to the wall at 600mm and push fitted the insulation between.
The next bit involved a nail gun so was great fun managed to charm the lady at Travis Perkins into giving me a discount and I was off. I fixed them in an offset pattern and tried to group similar widths of board together so it wasn’t too bumpy.
Then we had to make shelves for the plants to grow on. I used the ‘dice’ from the pallets (technical term for the square bits that go in between the pallets) screwed into the wall to support shelves made from more pallet boards. These dice are pretty tough and tricky to drill through, one of them still has half a drill bit in it where it snapped.
Once it was all up we put in the plants, I used Chinese evergreen, peace lily, some snake plants and a cutting from an old spider plant. I also put in a watering system! Well, I bought some globes that you fill up and they drip out over a couple of weeks, they are a bit inconsistent but a lot cheaper than some automated system. I top them up with waste water from kids water bottles and they are still growing nearly a year later.
My Shabbihaus eco retrofit project part 3 ventilation & bathroom
The other work I did at this time was in the bathroom, not really energy efficient specifically but we re-used the bath, just changing the handles. The sink was reclaimed from another site and we re-used wood from elsewhere in the house. I also looked at improving the ventilation and added a larger inline fan in a kitchen cupboard. This was set to overrun by 20 minutes and helped reduce humidity in the house, more on that in a bit.
After this point we had a new kitchen and bathroom so the opportunities for add on work were limited. Over the next few years the family got a bit bigger and problems with humidity began to increase in the bedrooms. Then, earlier this year the housing association who own the freehold for the property finally got their act together and decided they would replace the windows. I wanted new wooden ones but the majority won out and we got cheaper plastic ones. They seemed to think this would stop condensation but I realised that this will just condense elsewhere if we don’t remove it. I am also concerned about air quality as we are quite near the centre of town and pollution levels are high. So I did some investigation and formulated a plan to coincide with the window works that would deal with humidity and provide plenty of fresh, clean air in the flat.
I initially looked at mechanical ventilation with heat recovery, these systems are either too big or too noisy to install in a small flat and the filters don’t cover as many pollutants as I would like, a NOx filter is even bigger so even less likely to happen. I was still keen on using a bigger fan to ensure extraction from a central bathroom with a fairly long (3m) duct to the outside. Through some work I am doing with the GLA I came across the Aereco system which has a single fan and then extracts in the bathroom and the kitchen.
This extraction draws air in from the other drier rooms in the flat, I put a small vent in each door to allow the air to come through even when the doors are shut. Each room has a humidity controlled trickle vent on one window, this opens wider as the humidity in the room increases to allow more fresh air in. As there is quite a lot of traffic round us I also chose acoustic trickle vents which are larger. They work well but I probably wouldn’t bother if I did it again, I miss the sirens.
humidity controlled trickle vent 
Acoustic trickle vent
So I am drawing in dry air from outside, this might be a bit colder but heating dry air is a lot easier than heating wet air so there shouldn’t be an increase in costs. The fan runs all the time at a low speed so again uses very little energy, probably less than £20 a year. It’s also much quieter than my previous fan, I can’t actually hear it in the kitchen where it is located, the bathroom has a small noise because the intake is so close to the fan but still nothing compared to a normal bathroom fan.
Bathroom extract 
Fan in ceiling 
Kitchen extract and boxed in fan
So the ventilation has been in for a few months now and it does already feel fresher. The true test will be this winter but towels in the bathroom are drier and the summer heat is a little less stifling with the air flow through the rooms. When we installed we got the following extraction rates for the system. This meant at best we would achieve 14.8 l/s, which is above the minimum rates in Part F, but below what Vince from Aereco thinks the performance of the system should be.
After some investigation we changed the louvred grill on the outside to a better one and there was a massive increase of 12+pa at each extract grille. I’ve shown the rates below at 45pa. You can see that there is a performance increase of 2l/s just by changing the Louvre Grille outside.
Finally Vince provided me with the minimum extract rate for the grille as well. This is where our system can provide energy savings as when there is no moisture detected, it can drop to a very low extract rate, way below minimum regulations – Shown here at 4.8l/s.
So we are now halfway through winter and it is all looking good, no condensation that we have found and the towels in the bathroom are drying overnight. Cooking smells are also gone very quickly from the flat and no new mould is growing on the silicon round the bath. In the summer it was a little bit fresher overnight as well, no maintenance needed except washing the covers for the extract grill. No noticeable difference in our electricity use, when we turned the fridge, router etc off the energy usage was so low our monitor registered at 0p per hour.
The only drawback so far is that the plants are drying out, we never used to have to water the plants in the bathroom and now we have killed one of them and only just rescued the other!
Low impact green roof in Marlow
Lots of green roofs going in recently and I need to spend more time documenting them. This one in Marlow on a garage was a new design that I am quite pleased with.
I have been working for a while to reduce further the plastics going into a green roof. I used to work with SUDS (Sustainable Urban Drainage Systems) a lot in the past and one thing I always noticed was the number of pipe manufacturers trying to shoehorn more plastic into natural drainage systems. Roofs obviously need to be waterproof so I can’t change that bit and we need something to protect it from sharp objects etc. Then comes the drainage layer which is lots of plastic sheets, this is important to hold a bit of moisture but also to makes sure it drains effectively. So drainage is important for weight but maybe we can make it of something else. For this roof we used aerated clay balls wrapped in a filter sheet that is held in place with some extra large cobbles. So the plastic is at a minimum.
Starting out with a recycled protection mat for the roof 
Drainage layer of aerated clay balls 
Retention/protection fleece held in place with cobbles 
Finished roof 
Planting 
Planting 
Planting 
Adding substrate 
Adding substrate 
Lifting on to roof 
All planted and logs for mini beasts
The cobbles add a really nice touch to the edge of the roof and enhance the appearance considerably especially on a roof like this where there is no parapet. The soil is also held in place by the cobbles and I guess some of it may wash between them but not off the edge of the roof.
The roof has been planted with about 15 different plants, some sedum and ornamental, seeded with 30 different wildflowers and also bulbs planted to come up later in the year. I am monitoring progress and plan to pick up some crocus bulbs in autumn to plant.
Finished roof
If you like the look of this, drop me a line or give me a call 020 8133 0190 and I can see what we can do for you.
GLA warmer homes scheme
I am proud to be working with Retrofitworks on the GLA warmer homes scheme. For the past year we have been providing retrofit co-ordinator services to the scheme and provided new energy efficiency measures for over 250 homes throughout London.
As well as providing new boilers we have been improving ventilation, insulating walls and roofs and helping customers improve the windows and doors of their properties. We have even provided a new boiler for a pensioner living in a caravan.
The scheme involves a number of fully trained Retrofit Co-ordinators developing a plan of energy efficiency measures for the project based on a telephone interview and an advanced energy survey from a Domestic Energy Assessor.
Once the measures for the property have been agreed with the homeowner installation is carried out by one of the PAS 2030 certified installers and once complete carefully checked by the retrofit co-ordinator.
The scheme is one of the first to offer this independent verification of the work and this is creating better value for the client and the GLA as the co-ordinator is adding in extra measures for the funds available.
Putney retrofit project
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I am currently refurbishing this gorgeous two bedroom flat in Putney. The client is very keen to improve the performance of the house and I am working on the structure to ensure it will be warm, airtight and condensation free for the future. A Parity Home Energy Masterplan has also been carried out for the property and we are using this to inform the refurbishment.
The flat is spread over two floors with two roof terraces and the top floor is a loft conversion, this means there are lots of different types of construction and different opportunities to add different insulation types suitable for that construction.
We are also working very hard to minimise the VOC level in the flat and using appropriate
materials to combat this. I have been been checking all the materials before they come on site and consulting with the client to ensure she is happy. We have had to compromise in some areas, for instance the ceiling height is restricted in the loft conversion so we are using PIR insulation to keep as much space as possible, we have managed to source Isocynate free expanding foam to fill the gaps though so won’t be adding anymore chemicals to the air in the installation.
I will be adding updates and photos as this fascinating project progresses. I will mark them all #putneyretrofit
Extension in Kennington with green roof
I went to visit an extension in Kennington which has the biggest domestic green roof I have built. There are some very big skylights so it isn’t all green but it looks great. This first picture shows the rear extension with some rather fine timber cladding, you can see the plants poking over the top of the coping stones:
The combination of rain and sunshine we have seen this summer has been really good for the plants, even if people haven’t been so happy. I missed the peak flowering of this roof but there were still plenty in bloom on Monday. The clients daughter has a bedroom window looking out onto the roof and has been enjoying the developing scene.
The skylights really bring light into the house and the kitchen looks even bigger than the space the extension added on. You can see some of the plants waving in the breeze around the sides when you are having dinner.
Reclaimed materials in side return extension in Hackney
A side return infill extension with an industrial style. Extensive use of reclaimed materials, high standards of insulation and a wildflower green roof.
We completed this project late on last year working with Clements Design as the architects.
The project aimed to turn a cramped kitchen into a spacious area for cooking, eating and socialising. There is an industrial and sustainability theme to the project, the materials used are often from or designed for factories. Electrics are contained in galvanised metal conduit and the floor is concrete. Walls are exposed brick, both reclaimed glazed brick and the existing London stock bricks revealed to the world. The large glass panels to the roof draw in light to what was once a dark area and bring out the rich colours in the reclaimed wood cladding.
Though the materials could be seen as austere they are softened by the contents of the room that reflect family life, there is space for a large wooden toy stove, a comfy sofa and a gorgeous oak dining table with mismatched chairs.
The large rear doors mean the garden can be seen and accessed easily from the house, the doors can be flung open in the summer for barbecues. The green roof will develop over time but already has wildflowers peeking over the parapet and they can be seen swaying through the glass roof.
The project was also designed in conjunction with the neighbours and they share the party wall and the box gutter.
Sustainability was a key part of the client’s aim for the project. Reclaimed materials were used wherever possible. All the bricks removed in the demolition stage were cleaned and re-used onsite to build the new structure. Internally there are two walls of glazed bricks reclaimed from a lift shaft in Kensington. The other walls are the original brick exposed and insulated on the outside where appropriate. The bi-fold doors are triple glazed with a u-value of 1.09 are factory finished for long life and are made from environmentally sourced timber from sustainable forests. The heating is underfloor and utilises the existing condensing boiler, three Nest controls were added to the system to control this and create two new heating zones in the house.
The wood (for drawer fronts, shelves and cladding) is from a reclaimed wood specialist in Guiseley, Leeds, called Machells and is cut down from Yorkshire Victorian mill joists.
The large pendant lamps are reclaimed from a 1950’s factory in the Stoke area.
The table was made in Leeds from British oak 35 years ago.
All the shelf brackets and drawer handles were made in England in foundries using all traditional methods.
All lighting is LED, even filament style traditional bulbs are actually LED.
The green roof is part plug planted and part seeded with a mixture of wildflowers, meadow plants and some sedums. The roof will flower through most of the year and provide habitat for insects and foraging for birds amongst other biodiversity benefits.
