Delaware dreamers aim to green roofs

Imagine going to a local grocery store and buying produce that was grown directly on the store’s roof. This is precisely the type of innovation that Ryan Bunting and Derek Dutton, inventors of patent-pending AquaGreen Roofing systems, dream of.

Coastal Point • Submitted
This art shows how an AquaGreen Roofing system would work. The system includes storage of excess water for times when there is little rainfall, and a solution to relieve the system of excess water when there is too much.

From coast to coast people are trying to become more eco-friendly across all genres and professions. Making people’s lives sustainable and in harmony with nature is a slowly building revolution, and, locally, Bunting and Dutton are teaming up to be the pied pipers to local change. The two men have invented a new way of irrigating living roof systems, and are hoping to radically change the way business is done, both commercially and residentially, with the Milton-based business.

For those not familiar with living roof systems, they are basically rooftop gardens that cover the entirety of a roof, rather than a portion, and act as insulation for buildings, reducing energy costs and also gathering rainwater that falls.

Part of the trouble with traditional living roof systems has been that they can’t absorb all the water that falls onto them during peak rainfall months, yet when there is a drought or lack or rain, they lie parched and must be manually irrigated from the public water supply.

The product, originally spearheaded by Bunting, and a vision Dutton shared and later became a part of, solves both problems — excess water and lack of water — by incorporating simple ideas to create a big impact.

To this end, they have generated AquaGreen Roofing, an irrigation system that gathers the excess water from a living roof system and allows a homeowner, or commercial business, to use that water (once filtered) for things like laundry, showering and flushing toilets. It stores the excess water for later use, and this means that dry months won’t require additional (outside) water to keep the roof living and breathing.

In order to understand why rethinking ideas about excess water is important, people have to take a look at the way it is currently captured. In many beach towns, including some of locally, the excess water from storms flows directly onto driveways and streets, and ultimately can run into the canals, bays and ocean.

That is because the water that falls from the storms isn’t able to be absorbed into the earth, as it would be if it weren’t for human infrastructure. Concrete sidewalks, paved roads and buildings take up land that would otherwise be open space capable of taking in that water.

While regulations limiting impervious surfaces are popping up locally, the AquaGreen roofing system would help to greatly reduce that excess water that is still flowing (along with all the subsequent waste from the streets) from flowing into the waterways, and instead make it useful for every day.

How this translates into systems of development can have a far-reaching influence on the way people do business locally and globally. For instance, when a developer wants to build a community, they have to first spend millions of dollars laying out their stormwater system designs, which include ponds.

Take a drive through any recently laid development, and you’ll see the aesthetically pleasing ponds, with their fountains, embedded in the landscape of the community. While they may catch the eye for a millisecond, they are also a drain on development funds, not to mention the extra land required to build these systems. They are also not as efficient as many would like to believe. AquaGreen Roofing irrigation could help eliminate the use of storm water ponds, and incorporate newer technologies, saving money. Putting a living roof on houses in preplanned communities means that houses are more sustainable, economical, and cost efficient for builders on the whole.

It also means that storm water is reused, reduced, and recycled.

Perhaps it could be said that the team is a bit idealistic, but only in the best ways. They see their system as a pillar in a great cathedral of ecologically friendly changes that can mean sustainability for the human race. They dream of their systems being installed on WalMart-sized buildings, where gardens yielding food can be grown to feed populations across the world, from countries whose infrastructures need rebuilding already, to the United States — and that dream all begins on Delmarva, with AquaGreen Roofing.

Though green roofing isn’t new, the technology to sustainably support irrigation of the green roof is the piece of the puzzle that needed definition. With Bunting and Dutton’s systems – which can be tailored to the exact environment and living conditions of the customer – the possibilities of where green roofing can go is literally limitless.

The concept isn’t just about today, next year, or even the next five years; the ideas of today are the realities of tomorrow, and learning to harness nature in tangible ways may allow the human race to collectively enjoy a brighter future.

For more information, visit hydrological.org or call (302) 841-4444.