Norsteel

So, you’ve heard all the experts talking about going green, and environmentally responsible living. Well, now you can combine the two with your Pre-fabricated Metal building project.

The greenest and most beautiful thing you can do to your metal building project is to integrate green, or living walls into your landscaping. Whether you create them indoors, or outdoors, these are absolutely beautiful! Integrate greenery into your environment through the building of living walls; you will have created a beautiful and healthy environment.

You can use self-building kits of wood or metal to grow succulents and other plants through strategically placed cuts in the panels. Some panels initially sit flat allowing the roots to settle with gravity, and then the panels are gradually raised to their permanent vertical position and the plants continue to grow. Others are arranged so that the plants are placed into pockets in the vertical panels.

There are a great many benefits to living walls outdoors:

• living walls can function as rainwater catchments systems
• in an environment where space is limited, they can serve as vegetable gardens
• their plants are natural filters for cleaner living space

And there are many benefits to living walls indoors:

• Living walls trap many airborne pollutants and particulates on the plant surfaces
• Their plants take up Carbon Dioxide, and provide bio-filtration of interior environments
• The plants remove Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) from the air

Living walls can include specialized and engineered envelope systems where vegetation is planted, irrigated and grown in modular elements, which are secured to, or integrated with, the wall of a building. With these types of living walls, whether indoors or out, plants typically grow, without soil, between layers of fibrous material (such as felt or plastic mesh), or in pre-vegetated panels, that are suspended in front of a building wall.

Based on the principles of hydroponics, nutrient enriched water drips slowly to the bottom of the wall where any excess is pumped up and re-circulated.

Some living walls even cleverly incorporate a pool at the base of the structure and can include fish and small animals such as amphibians.