COUGAR PLACE RETROFIT

Southeast Building South Facade

This is an orthographic view of a retrofitted green roof on Cougar Place at the University of Houston. Dimensions are in inches. Noticeably, there is a pipe drainage system feeding into the collection storage tank at the bottom of the building. This is made out of 6-in. diameter PVC pipe and will be implemented five times across the length of the building. 
The green lines indicate "hidden lines," or areas of the cross section which would normally be out of view. This includes an excessive water runoff valve on either side of the building, and also includes the waterproof tarp covering the roof. This tarp will go over the roof of the building, but will be beneath the soil layering. 
A-36 Steel must be used to reinforce the extra weight the roof will bear. Instead of a sheet, the steel is evenly spaced 15 times spanning the length, 155 feet, of the building. Since the University of Houston Facilities did not grant us access to view the site plans, we estimated the I-beam steel to have flanges 6 inches thick by 3 inches tall, while the web has a width of 2 inches and a height of 8 inches. This is only speculation, and an educated estimate based off common I-beam steel roofing material. Because this is only an estimate, the actual projected cost of the steel was omitted from the cost analysis. Additionally, roofing for an industrial building already has steel built in; there is no way to figure out how much added steel there needs to be without looking at the actual drafting plans.  
The pressure valves in the storage tank can be used with an electric actuator to channel water back up through the PVC piping to a sprinkler, which is on the surface of the green roof. Just below the sprinkler head is a stormwater grate that allows excess water to flow back down to the tank should the roof reach beyond the saturation point.