Building Rooftop Terraces with Echo Blocks

Five years in the making, the recycled rubber Echo Roofing System will make its debut on the rooftops and terraces of a new upscale high rise apartment, retail and commercial complex in the heart of midtown Miami, Florida.

A product of Fort Lauderdale, Florida-based Shredded Tire, Inc., the Echo roofing system product line was created by Shredded Tire founder and president Richard Spreen to eliminate problems associated with traditional building and roofing systems and to utilize recycled tire material as part of the building system.

Inspired by news reports showing discarded tires from a failed reef lying on the ocean floor off the cost of Fort Lauderdale, Spreen, an experienced roofing professional, combined his building expertise with his desire to find a practical recycling solution for scrap tires, created the Echo Block—a 2ft x 2ft versatile construction block that forms the core of the Echo roofing system.

Echo roofing systems are comprised of Echo Blocks, a roofing component made with a mixture of shredded tire material, silica flume, cement slag, cement and water poured into a mold and cured.

The finished blocks have an 87 percent certified recycled content, are moisture resistant, mold and bug resistant and have a tested uplift strength of -502.5 PSF and a safety factor of 2, Adnan Velic, Technical Director at Shredded Tire, said.

The Echo system roofing components include Echo Edge, a replacement for wood blocking, Echo Block, a sloping insulated block and Echo flow, a reverse sloping and permeable block.

Together they create a flat, permeable walking surface ideal for rooftop terraces and gardens.

Artifical turf and porcelain tile pavers can be placed on top of the flat Echo roof surface and its design allows the Echo blocks to be removed designed to create set-in planting areas resulting in an attractive, functional green roof.

All of the blocks are Dade County NOA, approved for concrete and steel decks and have a UL class A, fire rating, Velic said.

In a new development, based on the successful testing and building code approval of Echo Edge, which replaces wood blocking, the company has designed and is testing a wood replacement for coping cap nailers, Velic said. Echo Coping Caps, made from the same recycled content material as Echo blocks, have the potential to eliminate millions of linear feet of pressure treated wood now used on roofs, he said.

For Spreen, the next frontier, already in development at Shredded Tire, is the Echo Home.

Two Echo Home prototypes have been constructed using the same patented mixture of shredded tires and cements to test the limits of the products strength and free span ability. To date and after a 20,300 lb. load was applied to the peak of the roof…we have yet to discover just what that limit is, Spreen said.

© Scrap Tire News, December 2019