How Green Walls Help Cool Buildings During Temperature Spikes
How Green Walls Help Cool Buildings During Temperature Spikes
14 September 2021
Green walls are sometimes viewed as simply being aesthetic additions to indoor and outdoor spaces, however well-designed greening actually provides many more benefits than just looking pretty. The systems’ benefits include deterring graffiti, providing new habitats for wildlife and cleaning the air by absorbing carbon dioxide, releasing oxygen and trapping pollutants. Green walls can also help reduce the effects caused by urban heat islands. An urban heat island is an urban area that experiences heightened temperatures compared to surrounding rural areas due to human activities such as replacing foliage with bricks and tarmac.
As construction techniques and building materials have improved, new buildings are now better insulated than ever. Which is fine during the winter, but it means that during the summer, building interiors are becoming increasingly hot. This together with increasing temperatures due to climate change and the effects of urban heat islands, can make conditions in modern buildings unbearable during hotter periods. If climate predictions are correct and temperatures continue to rise, this issue is only going to get worse.
Although insulation is still required for winter months, research into other solutions is going to be crucial to help solve this issue. One solution to help reduce the rising temperatures inside buildings is to introduce urban greening, specifically greening that is grown up the sides of buildings.
Residential Living Wall Jakob Webnet
Research has been conducted into how greening can help cool buildings during the summer months and has shown that vegetated walls can eliminate the need for mechanical air-conditioning, having been found to keep wall temperatures much lower than non-vegetated walls. Read more about the results of research into greening cooling buildings in our why planting a ‘green wall’ could improve your wealth blog.
We supply and install residential and commercial green wall systems. Our systems consist of stainless steel wire rope, rods and Webnet wire mesh, creating trellises that can be fitted to building façades, providing structures for plants to be grown up or cascaded down. For more information about the benefits of green walls or to get a quotation for a green wall for your project, please contact us.