19 May

Smart Green Roof Project: Chapter 3

The roof has grown—SLA Beeber students wrapped up version 1.0 of their Smart Green Roof model at the Fairmount Water Works this month, completing the project by creating the storage layer and planting sedum. The storage layer—made of brightly colored plastic pieces beneath the soil (constructed from Locktagon toys)—is designed to hold water as it seeps through the soil and through a filter fabric.

What makes this a “smart” model are the sensors designed to monitor how this miniature green roof uses and stores water. Soil moisture sensors and a temperature sensor can inform us about plant health; and an ultrasonic distance sensor looks down an observation well to gauge the level of water in the storage portion of the model. The data can be seen on an LCD display, and all of it is powered by a solar panel. The empty compartment in the lower right part of the model will someday house a pump that can irrigate the plants on demand. (That’s version 2.0 of the model.)

In April, the Smart Green Roof team brought the model to the Philadelphia Science Festival, where we demonstrated how green roofs work and what they do: capture stormwater, reduce the urban heat island effect, and save energy by insulating buildings.

This week, we finished with a trip to Villanova University to check out the green roof on top of the college’s CEER building. Because Villanova researchers have also outfitted their green roof with a variety of sensors and irrigation devices, it is very much like a scaled-up version of the Smart Green Roof model.

13 Feb

Smart Green Roof Project: Chapter 1

This spring, greenSTEM is delighted to have guest bloggers! We’re working with the Fairmount Water Works and high school students from SLA Beeber to create a smart green roof model using microcontrollers and sensors.

Fairmount Water Works is excited to partner with Matt Fritch and the Philadelphia Water Department to host four high school interns from Science Leadership Academy at Beeber. Chelby, Ashton, Tyheim and Terrance come to FWW weekly to meet with Matt, FWW educator Rachel O., and volunteer Billy K. We began the internship back in October, but we are just getting blogging now. Here are some observations from the past few months.

We began with tours of the Water Works and set some goals:

  • “The Fairmount Water Works can help me with my goals in many ways. I have learned to be a better person thanks to this place, it helped to shape who I am. Also, when I go to college, I might study to be a doctor or scientist so this helps for that.” —Tyheim
  • “FWW can help me meet different people and build connections.”—Chelby

We learned a bit about the history of FWW, walked around and learned about this historic place:

  • “One cool thing I learned was that people used to drink water straight from the river….When people went in boats in the river they boated in canals so they wouldn’t crash into the dam.” —Chelby
  • “There used to be seals here! And there used to be a pool area.” —Tyheim

Now it’s time to get to work. Matt is teaching us about Arduinos and how they are used to monitor different sites. Rachel is still trying to understand this, but she likes when Matt said that the Arduino is a really dumb computer. It can basically tell its sensor to do one thing: light on/light off, temperature readings, moisture, etc. We’ll be using our Arduinos to connect to sensors to monitor soil moisture. To water or NOT to water? That is the question.

We started learning about Arduinos and how to set them up to do different things. We learned to solder the appropriate parts.

  • “Today we learned a little about Arduino and what it does. We learned that the soil moisture sensor senses the amount of water in the ground. We will probably be using this for our green roof. We also learned about other things the arduino can do with sensors.” —Tyheim

*We met on January 18 at Cira Green to look at the green roof. Rachel learned that the roof is designed to hold 500 people DANCING! She is hoping to get invited to that party.

  • “It’s really cool, but not at all what I expected. It is like a big park floating over the city. The views are fantastic. It cost $12 million to build.” —Chelby
  • “During our trip to the green roof I learned that the soil is being held up by flattened milk crates. The rain water is held up in a tank that is used for such things as toilet water.” —Terrance

We now have to learn a bit more about how green roofs are constructed, so we spent a few days researching. We’ll be making a model that can sit on a tabletop. Sensors will be incorporated into this model so we can tell the water level in the model. We have been practicing coding to make this sensor work.