Copeland Building Envelope Consulting
We solve building envelope problems.
James Landing Condominiums in Scituate, MA is a waterfront property with 50 units spread across 5 architect-designed buildings. The setting is pristine, overlooking the North River as it winds towards the Atlantic, but exposes the buildings to punishing weather. Over the years nature had taken its toll and over the course of 2020-2021 the association embarked on a large-scale project to repair the aging building envelope systems.
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Episode 5 of the podcast is a discussion of air barriers, vapor barriers, and the building science fundamentals of how water moves via bulk air flow (advection) and vapor diffusion.
Read moreOur balcony column restoration project is coming along nicely at Gateway Condominiums in Beverly, MA. Lawton Welding is on site today installing new structural steel columns on the south side of the north building.
Unmanned aerial photography, aka “drone” photography, is becoming more prevalent in many building-related applications including design, investigations and construction. We’ve made extensive use of drones for building envelope inspections on several projects. That’s why when we had an opportunity to make a podcast about drone photography we jumped at it.
In today’s episode our guest is Mindi Sokoloski (LinkedIn) of Multispectral Aerial Solutions. We talk about using drones to improve efficiency and reduce risk as well as technologies like photogrammetry. We hope you enjoy the episode.
One could boil down our job as enclosure consultants to this: help people to keep water from accumulating where it shouldn’t.
Water causes all kinds of trouble with many building materials. Wood rots, steel corrodes, masonry spalls and cracks, microbes and fungi grow. Gypsum that once formed solid panels turns to mud.
We call these parts of the building—the ones damaged by water—the “moisture-sensitive” components. The main goal of the building envelope is to protect these moisture-sensitive components from exposure to water. Sounds simple, right?
Unfortunately nature conspires to foil our water control efforts in a variety of ways. In this post we’ll explore some less-than-obvious ways that water ends up where it can cause problems.
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