Hi folks,

SSc5 - Heat Island Reduction

Core & Shell V4

Working on an office project with occupiable roofs on floors 3 – 8.  Each outdoor patio consists of green roof and pavers.  The pavers are set up on a pedestal system – below the pedestal system we hold water as a blue roof – all of that sitting upon “the roof” (insulation, weather barrier, deck, etc). 

I’m trying to figure out what would be considered roof versus nonroof measure here in regard to the pavers.  I’ve read up on a lot of the discussion on the forums though I haven’t seen something specifically addressing this in v4 (though I could be missing something).

In looking at the Option 1 equation for nonroof & roof: from previous posts I gather that the planted portions of the roofs are just that – “vegetated roof”.  While the walkable paving that goes around the gardens would be considered “high reflectance roof” since it is the highest layer to the sky (these terraces all sit above conditioned space on the floor below). 

However, I’m getting some pushback from the team wondering why the pavers above the blue roof wouldn’t be considered “nonroof” measures.  The pavers sit upon what you could consider actual “roof” functions and the question has come up – “we can consider them nonroof when the pavers are on the ground level, why wouldn’t we also consider these same pavers on a pedestal system nonroof?  Just b/c they’re up a higher?”.   I do see some merit in that question so I wanted to put it to you all and see if we could drum up some consensus. 

Any help is appreciated.

Thanks,

Tom