We had the soil blown onto the roof today! They brought it in a mulch blowing truck and it took them ~3 hours total, not including all their travel time. Toby calculated that it would have been ~1012 5-gallon buckets for us to haul it all onto the roof by ourselves. I’m so glad we hired the blower instead!!!
Here they are, just getting started on the top roof. You can also see the finished painting. The color didn’t turn out all that bad.
Here they are almost done…
The soil didn’t always flow easily through the hose. Sometimes you would hear a change in the tone of the pump and you would know that a huge amount of soil was about to push through. The guys would brace themselves and hold tight to the hose while they waited for the soil monster to burst out. It was really cool.
Here’s a close up of the soil. As you can see, it is mostly chunks of slate with a little compost matter mixed in.
Our plants are being delivered next Thursday, so we hope to plant the roof next weekend! I can’t wait to see how it all looks!!
I don’t know anyone else who has planted their roof! And I think the color looks like a bit of sky against the trees. I think it is soothing.
i like the color a lot. i know it’s not yellow but it looks nice with the cordwood and red door.
that’s would have been a lot of buckets of dirt to haul!
This is SO SO cool, Maria…can’t wait to see it planted!
I can’t imagine how long it would have taken without the blower!
Awesome! And I really like the blue with the red door. I think if you planted some sunny yellow flowers around the house, you’d have the brightness you were looking for with the yellow paint. Everything just looks great! I can’t wait to see the roof growing!
And happy Mother’s Day, friend!
Out of curiosity, (and you probably mentioned this much earlier in the blog) but was your house purposely designed for the incredible load of soil + plants + water? I had always read that “living roofs” were usually not planted in soil because they are so incredibly heavy????
Just wondering. Beautiful place by the way. I’m envious, as I’m trapped in the city.
Hey Just Curious,
Yes, we calculated the weight of all of it and engineered the roof to carry the load. It’s actually really over engineered. I keep saying ‘soil’ but it is a product called Stalite, that is specially made for living roofs. One of the benefits of using this special “green roof” soil is that is it much lighter than actual top soil, or planting soil. Because it has tiny kiln expanded slate pieces in it along with some compost material. So, the water seeps through it faster instead of being held in the soil. This makes it harder to grow plants, because they water sheds so fast, so we use drought tolerant plants.