[Strawbale]green roof on a straw bale loading walls

[Rene Dalmeijer]

Valentina,

I recently built a small Load bearing SB building with a green roof. 
This building has been built according to Dutch building regulations 
which are quite strict. There are no specific SB codes here so I had to 
give extra information to support the building permit. All in all 
though I had no trouble and the building functions very well partly due 
to the green roof.

Depending on the size of the building a green roof might be too much 
for a purely LB SB wall although it does mean the house is quite big. A 
rough approach is to find out how much roof is area supported per ft/m 
SB wall. Based on the most conservative code for loading of a SB wall, 
the maximum allowable combined load is 10kN/m (giving a 2.81 safety 
factor) This means if you have a total roof span of 10m the maximum 
allowable weight of of the roof structure and loads is 2kN/m^2 
(10/(10/2) This is because the wall only has to bear the half span.

The green roof system applied in the small building accounted for a 
dead load of 0.8 kN/m^2

On May 27, 2005, at 07:36, strawbale-request at amper....muni.cz wrote:

> Hi all!
> i guess that there are some "nebraska" houses with green=20
> roof....built....
> i'm planning one....i have to pass all law certification process...i=20
> found and look at some test of loads that straw bale can 
> carry....and=20
> it's seems that is not a good idea to have a green roof....
> anybody had already experience with it?
> thank you to all....a great list..
> all the best, valentina
>
Rene