UMN Team Wins National Competition

CopelandBEC recently provided technical and financial support for a team of students from the University of Minnesota competing in the national Solar Decathlon Collegiate Competition in Golden, Colorado. We’re thrilled to report that the UMN team came away with first place in the attached housing division and the grand prize of the entire residential division! Read the full results here.

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CopelandBEC-Sponsored UMN Team Reaches Solar Decathlon Finals

Over the past few months CopelandBEC has been working with students and faculty advisors from the University of Minnesota (UMN) Solar Decathlon team. The UMN team is competing in this nationwide event sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy.

The U.S. Department of Energy Solar Decathlon is a collegiate competition that prepares the next generation of building professionals to design and build high-performance, low-carbon buildings powered by renewables.

U.S. Department of Energy

Based on the UMN team’s performance in the semifinals in February, they have now advanced to compete in the finals to be held April 20–23, 2023 in Golden, Colorado at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.

We’re thrilled to have been able to play a small role in the UMN team’s project and wish them the best in Golden! Below are some renderings of the project building, courtesy of the UMN team.

WuXi Update—March 2023

As we roll into spring our WuXi Biologics project in Worcester is beginning to take its final form.

The fenestration and finish cladding are in progress and we continue to make regular site visits. We’re looking ahead to assisting with some QA/QC testing of various envelope assemblies over the next several months.

Look at that blue sky—spring is here! Oh, and the wall cladding is going on!
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Edge Metal is Essential

Designing commercial low-slope roofing to resist the forces imposed by wind is critical to the roof’s longevity. This is especially true in regions frequently impacted by high wind weather events.

The building code lays out the requirements for roof wind design. The short-and-simple version is this:

  1. The designer identifies the loads expected to be imposed by the wind (e.g. pounds per square foot).
  2. The manufacturer tests assemblies made of its products to determine their capacity to resist applied loads.
  3. The contractor installs an assembly of products that has been tested (by the manufacturer) and demonstrated to be strong enough to resist the imposed loads.
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Better Buildings Newsletter

In case you missed it, I’ve started writing a weekly newsletter about how to make buildings work better. This week’s edition shares some of the free resources from our Building Envelope Self-Help page, and I’ve been sharing a lot of original content as well. Recent topics have included:

  • how designers can take more responsibility for communicating design intent
  • the impact that standard of care has on innovation

Check it out over on LinkedIn!