From the Toronto Star:
When Leslie Doyle and her husband, Jackson Stone, set out to design what will be one of the first newly permittedlaneway houses in Toronto, they knew they wanted it to be green and somewhat absorbent, particularly the roof.
Doyle owns Restoration Gardens Inc., a company that designs and installs living roofs — an engineered system of vegetation on top of filtration systems and waterproof layers built to insulate against energy loss and prevent flooding by absorbing heavy rainfall.
PLEASE NOTE: Toronto laneway housing regulations have recently been updated, some of the information contained in the linked articles may be out of date or inaccurate as of today’s date.
So stormwater and overflowing streets were top of mind when planning the two-storey laneway house on their Little Italy property.
“There is so much flooding,” says Doyle, who is also renovating the main house on the propertynear Ossington Ave. and College St. that will be the family’s home. “The more green roofs we can have in the city, the more it will help with storm water.”