Kilworth Car Wash’s green roof brings environmental and customer benefits
The green roof brings customers want to have a look and then get a car wash.
Kilworth Ontario is a little over two hours west of Toronto, part of Middlesex Centre and about 10 minutes outside of London, Ontario. Like every town in the province, it has various amenities, including a car wash.
Kilworth Car Wash officially opened in 2022 and offers four self-service car wash bays, and two automatic car wash facilities, one being a soft-touch car wash and next to it a touchless car wash. It provides vacuums for customers to clean the interior of their vehicles, a vending machine for various sundries and customers can use the car wash’s app to pay for the car wash service, for added convenience, and allows the car wash operation to be open 24/7.
The building sits nicely in its local setting, integrated well with the surrounding landscape.
In many cases, most would not normally take notice of a car wash – except that Kilworth Car Wash has something unique that makes it stand out while helping it integrate into the surrounding landscape. That is its green roof – a reference not to the colour, but to the growing greenery that sits on top of the building.
Steve Hebb, owner and operator of Kilworth Car Wash said that when he, his wife and his team were designing the car wash, the idea adding a green roof was something they did not consider first until they began to look into how it would help them integrate the building into the surrounding neighbourhood and help with issues such as storm runoff and the operation’s water reclamation efforts.
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“Where we are located, as you can see, is a very nice area, and we were concerned about making the right impression with the building,” Hebb said. “We began thinking of different ways we could make our building look nicer, to have a bit more ‘curb appeal’ as they say. And we wanted to tackle the issue of storm water runoff and drainage that the site had challenges with.”
For those who may be asking what a green roof is, at its simplest, a green roof is a roof on a building that is completely or partially covered with vegetation. That vegetation and its root barrier and drainage system allow the vegetation to thrive while capturing rainwater so less of it enters a municipality’s stormwater management system and can be integrated into a building’s larger water management and reclamation systems to help further reduce water usage.
Hebb said the green roof, supplied by LiveRoof Ontario, Inc. located not too far from the car wash, provides many benefits to Kilworth Car Wash, besides just helping in reducing stormwater runoff.
“For one, it just looks really nice and helps us stand out to people driving by,” Hebb added. “Many stop when they see it and they ask us questions about the roof, what it does and such, and I would say nine-time out of ten, they then decide to get a car wash with us. It is a real draw for customers, and we have people tell us that they have come to our car wash from London just to see the green roof and to find out how it works. And once those customers get a car wash with us, many become customer for life with us.”
The roof’s vegetation also helps in regulating the heating and cooling of the building, acting as a natural insulator. Hebb remarked that during the summer months, the roof cools a large part of the building, and in winter helps in keeping the operations warm, thereby reducing cooling and heating operating costs.
He added that the green roof enhances Kilworth Car Wash’s environmental efforts, as the roof provides a natural habitat for wildlife such as birds, butterflies and dragonflies in the surrounding area, something that attracts the attention of everyone in the community.
“It is also just fun to go up there and see all that life up there,” Hebb said. “You feel like you are amidst nature. We even have a goose that nests there each year and raises its young and everyone says how much they enjoy seeing how the roof’s vegetation changes with the changing of the seasons, all the different colours. Another benefit is that the roof has become something of a star on social media and people just seem to love it and what we are doing here.”
