Up on the roof: New Yorkers find overhead greening saves on bills, taxes
Want to turn the tar beach atop your New York City home into a leafy oasis?
A green roof is one environmentally friendly answer.
This trendy home improvement — a blanket of special lightweight soil, insulation, waterproofing and low-maintenance plants — will save you money by cutting your power bills and increasing the life span of your roof, experts said.
And there’s an extra incentive — a federal tax credit that’s part of the Energy Policy Act of 2005, which established deductions for energy-efficient home improvements.
“A green roof would qualify for a tax credit because of its insulating properties,” said Carl Weinstein, a certified public accountant in Roslyn Heights, L.I.
The federal law allows homeowners to get a tax credit equal to 10% of the cost of insulation materials, up to $500, for money spent in 2006 or 2007.
An Internal Revenue Service spokesman cautioned that taxpayers should read IRS regulations closely before claiming any credits.
One of Weinstein’s clients, architect Paul Gleicher, built a green roof last year as part of an environmentally conscious renovation of his family’s W.71st St. townhouse in Manhattan.
They love having their secret garden “in the middle of the urban jungle,” Gleicher said.
Garden materials to cover part of his 400-square-foot roof cost about $5,000. Because the plants and soil are relatively lightweight, no extra spending on structural reinforcement was necessary.
The plants are a carpet of sedum — hardy succulents that grow on mountains.
During the summer, crickets chirped amid the greenery. Now that it’s winter, patches of the sedum have turned brownish red. In the spring, they’ll blossom with small wildflowers of purple, yellow and white.
Green roofs last two to three times longer than regular ones, said Leslie Hoffman, executive director of Earth Pledge, a Manhattan nonprofit that runs the Green Roofs Initiative.
And green roofs can cut air-conditioning bills by more than 20%, she said. On sultry summer days, they throw less heat into the atmosphere than conventional roofs — whose temps can rise to 150 degrees Fahrenheit. On green roofs, it’s only 80 degrees.
And they retain up to 80% of the rain that falls on them — a help to often-flooded city sewers.
Gleicher’s confident that in the long run, he’ll see a payoff in the form of lower energy bills. That’s not the only reason his green roof makes him happy, though.
“It’s not only the economic benefit,” said Gleicher, whose architecture firm, Gleicher Design Group, recently launched a subsidiary that emphasizes eco-friendly design.
“There’s an aesthetic benefit,” he said. “And it’s great for the environment, too.”
BY LORE CROGHAN
New York Daily News
DAILY NEWS BUSINESS WRITER