The biggest ‘Living Roof’ of it’s kind in the UK

The biggest ‘Living Roof’ of it’s kind in the UK

This may look like a top-secret spy bunker, carefully camouflaged amongst its surroundings. But the chameleon properties of this dome-shaped dwelling was the only way Southern Water could get the go-ahead to build it. It is in fact the company’s newest state-of-the-art wastewater treatment plant.

The £300m Peacehaven facility is scheduled for completion early next year and has the biggest turfed roof of its kind in the UK, the size of two-and-a-half football pitches at a massive 17,800m2.

Its crowning glory, installed by contractor Prater Ltd, is exactly what Southern Water needed to convince planning bodies that after over 10 years of delays, Peacehaven could seamlessly blend into the natural landscape in keeping with the company’s own environmental improvement scheme.

But given that a green thatch of its size and scale had simply never been achieved before, the challenge was finding the right base for this ‘living roof’ to thrive.

Tata Steel firmly planted itself as the expert for the job by providing over 18,000 m2 of its RoofDek D100 – a decking-based, single-ply lightweight system which not only ensured the necessary time and cost savings, but perfectly matched the visual and physical requirements to secure planning approval.

Clad in Olive Green double-sided Colourcoat HPS200 Ultra® to ensure outstanding colour retention and corrosive resistance, the RoofDek system is easily able to handle the extra load of its turf topping.

The building’s walls, created using Tata Steel’s C19 profile, also feature the same Colourcoat HPS200 Ultra® double-sided coating both internally and externally, providing a barrier against the demanding internal environment of the plant which, when completed, will treat 95 million litres of wastewater every day.

The grass topper won’t grow out of control however – the plan is to keep it at a level field to maintain the weight of the roof.

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Green roofs