REAL GREEN ROOFS

(or is it ROOVES?)

The last day of the conference was a chance for delegates (posh name for conference visitors) to see some green roofs here in Sheffield.

Did you even know we had any?

Nigel Dunnett our advisor from the Sheffield University was kind enough to show us around his small but imaginative garden. It has two sheds both of which have green roofs. The big blue one has also had a dry stone wall addition as well as planting on top.

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The little one has had some extra posts put up and some wood boxes made on the roof to hold the substrate (what the plants grow in), this is kind of gravel and crushed bricks and things.

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They are great, instead of being big ugly sheds they are part of the garden and look great as well as giving the birds and insects somewhere else to live.

HOORAY ...ENGLAND WINS TODAY

We've been very busy over the last week with all the green roof stuff and so we are putting our feet up for a bit of a rest. We watched the England game today. Top man David Beckham, he must have magic football boots! I am a great fan of football and hope that England can make it further.

I'll keep my fingers crossed for them.

Bye for now.

Brix

What a lot of visitors...

We put a counter on our site a few weeks ago to tell us how many people come to look at our site, as well as some other information about our visitors. You can see from the bar chart below that we have had lots of people come to look at our site and read all about the work going on with the new school.

We also heard that our site has been forward to CABE (Commision for Architecture and the Built Environment), perhaps they will write and tell us what they think!

We have noticed that 178 people have looked at our profile to see more about what we do and what we like.

GREEN ROOF CONFERENCE

We went to the Green Roof Conference today. Lots of people (nearly 200 we think) had come together from all over the world to talk about what they were doing with planted roofs. We sat in front of Paul.

We met Nigel Dunnett from Sheffield University who has worked hard to find some special money for our special bio-diverse roof. He is also going to help us with how to choose and layout all the plants on the roof so they help all the insects and birds as much as possible.

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Cath introduced us to Dusty Gedge (from London) who loves bird watching and is very interested in green roofs because of a little bird called the Black Redstart that likes to live on them.

We thought we had better get up close to some of these green roofs...this is a sedum roof (little tiny plants). People said it was a 'monoculture' because it is really just one kind of plant and not lots of different ones (which is apparently better). We suppose a monoculture is a bit like having the same thing for shool dinner every day, boring and only a few people who like that food would stay to eat it. It's much nicer to have lots of different things that change over time so you will always have things you like, lots of different people would stay for dinner then. It's good to make our special green/eco roof provide lots of different things and then many different insects and birds will like it, this is called bio-diverse. It's a bit like Sharrow School: the children are from different places, like different dinners and speak different languages we suppose that makes Sharrow School diverse as well.

This one is more diverse and Brix had a good look close up. Can you see Morta in the picture?

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Keith Missen from Sheffield City Council Planning Department did a really good talk how green roofs could help stop Sheffield flooding and help to keep us all cooler in the summer. You might just be able to see that he showed pictures of our new school to everyone. He said of the 12 or so green roofs going to be built in Sheffield ours was the most interesting and would be a flagship project for years to come!!!

He also showed our BLOG site to everyone!

There was so much to learn and we didn't want to miss things so we tried really hard to remember it all so we could tell you folks all about it.

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We needed a drink to keep us going though! Phew, we're really tired now and need to get some sleep...bye.

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WE'RE OFF TO THE GREEN ROOF CONFERENCE TOMORROW

Tuesday and Wednesday at Ranmoor Hall, Sheffield University

GREEN ROOFS

The National Green Roof Conference is taking place in Sheffield next week (see 'links' for more information) and as a bit of education and publicity Groundwork (see 'links' for more information) were out at the top Fargate on Saturday with a shed with a sedum roof. They were so keen to show it to everyone that they had to get up at 6am to be here in time.


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Wendy from Groundwork Sheffield was showing people the sedum mat that the plants grow in (its like turf but with sedum plants), which is then put on the roof or you can grow it from scratch. A waterproof layer is used to keep your building dry and stop it rotting and then if it is flat all you need is some foam/spongy stuff that holds some water and the crushed brick/gravelly stuff that the plants grow in (a bit like alpines in a rockery). You then sow lots of little tiny sedum plants by sprinkling them on the damp surface and they root and hey presto! The sedum plants are the magic bit as they are very good at drinking lots of water when it rains and then being able to keep going when it is hot and dry and everything else dies.

If your roof slopes then you have to use some eggbox things to hold to crushed gravelly growing medium so it doesn't just fall off.

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Fergus on the left is from Groundwork Sheffield and Wendy is by the table. They are keen to encourage us all to install green roofs on our sheds and garages and to provide as much green space as we can because it all helps. We must say that even though it was a red hot day and the plants had all been packed together for their journey they soon perked up and were looking wonderful. We are both looking forward to going along with Cath to the green roof conference next week and meeting the most important green roof people in the world. On day three of the conference Cath is showing folks the roof at Norfolk Community Primary School that was finished 2 years ago. Perhaps in a couple of years all those important people will want to come and see our special roof, that would be really great!

BLOG VISITORS

According to the statistics of who uses our site only 83% of the people who look at it are from the United Kingdom...the rest have come from (most first): USA, Canada, Uraguay, Mexico and Germany.

They almost sound like a World Cup football pool!

How many other countries can we get to visit us we wonder. If all you visitors would pass on our weblink:

http://sharrowconstructionbuddies.blogspot.com/

to as many of your friends as you can we'll get lots more visitors and may be some e-mails.

We hope to be doing a bit of country visiting ourselves soon. we are going to go to visit some of the places that make things that our school will be built of. Scunthorpe is (hopefully) first on the list to see the polystyrene blocks that will make the basement retaining walls (walls that keep the ground up) for the nursery. then we are looking forward to making it to Denmark to see the windows and doors being made after that who knows?

Our first visit to site

We thought it was time that we went to site to have a look ourselves at the progress being made.

We sat in on a site meeting first. Phew it was hot inside the site cabin

There was a lot of talk about things like putting the drains in (which is being done now), getting all the information ready for the steel frame that is going to hold the building up, making sure that the budget (the money for the project) is being kept to and also is it on programme. The programme is the timetable for all the building work and apparently we are on programme at the moment so it should be ready to move in for September 2007. All this nice dry and sunny weather is a big help because the site is not muddy. When it rains everything gets wet and muddy and its not nice and the diggers can get stuck.

On the left of the picture above you can see Tom who is our Project Manager, he makes sure it all gets built on time and on budget. No pressure on him then!

We had a new friend come to site with us today: his name is Daniel he is 14 and he has come to to do his work experience in our office, he would like to be an architect or engineer. so he came to the meeting and then came with us onto the site to have a look at what is going on.

In the background you can see the pipes sticking out of the ground, these are the connctions for all the toilets and sinks in the nursery and reception classrooms. The white stuff is hardcore (stones) that has been put down ready to start the concrete for the foundations (they're the big lumps at the bottom that the rest of the building sits on).

WOW we are so excited!

We've had our first e-mail...somebody is actually looking at what we're doing. That's kind of scary! Thanks ever so much to Molly and Ella in Y1 for the following:

We have seen your model it is excellent. I bet it took you a long time to make
it. Molly y1

it looks fun at Centre Parcs and I like my new school ella havard
y1

We hope you both bookmark our BLOG and come back now and again to see what has been happening. Perhaps we'll visit you at school, now there's a thought...

Making a model















This is Kath she is an Architectural Technologist and works in the Architects office. Kath built a model some time ago to help people to understand how the new school worked. There have been some changes to the design since the model was first made and Kath as been bringing it up to date and also adding on some bits to show the planted roof and terraces.

Here we are having a look at it close up

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This is the front of the school that will face the Mount Pleasant Park

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Is this what it's going to be like?

Morta wanted to take a closer look at what was going on so decided to sneak a peak at the work on the computer...these are some of the pictures of the new school that went to the Planning Committee earlier this year.

Computer images courtesy of Architectural Images

WOW drains...

Well this is what is happening at the moment...

The people you can just see wearing the yellow jackets are putting in the pipes that will take all the rainwater that falls on the roof of the new school and put it in a big tank under the nursery playground. This is so we can use it to flush the toilets in the school. This will save the school money and help save the planet we live on.

This picture shows some of the other drains, these take away the dirty water after you have flushed the toilet! We didn't have space to do anything useful with this water so it has to go into a sewer and to a sewage farm to be made back into clean water. The the grey thing you can see is a manhole, it collects together several smaller pipes and puts them together to continue its journey.

Some of the folks on site!

Photo L-R Kev-the Site Engineer, Kev-Architect who works in the office with Cath, Paul the Architectural Technologist who you saw at the meeting with Building Control, Tony-the Site Manager and Gemma-the Assistant Site Manager.