Stormwater Effectiveness of an Operating Green Roof Stormwater Treatment System and Comparison to Scaled Down Green Roof Stormwater Treatment System Chambers (2007)

This report presents the results of a successful operating green roof in the state of Florida. The green roof is located on the Student Union building at the University of Central Florida. This green roof has thrived for more than two years hosting more than 50 tours educating architects, engineers, and policy makers on the many benefits green roofs provide. Comparison of this full sized operating green roof stormwater treatment system with scaled down green roof stormwater treatment system chambers showed that the full size system can be described by the previously reported equivalent experimental chamber data. Thus the experimental chamber data can be used to predict full scale operation of an active green roof designed for Florida climate conditions. The data used for the comparison included both water quality and quantity results. It is shown that evapotranspiration rates and filtrate factors for the regular irrigated chambers are comparable for the irrigation schedules used on the full scale roof. It is also noted that a cistern with irrigation of the green roof must be used to meet water quality reduction goals. Larger cistern sizes will improve the mass reduction from the system.