Copeland Building Envelope Consulting is working with Dietz & Company Architects on a gut renovation project at the former Essex Apartments in downtown Holyoke, MA. The project will restore this historic property into affordable housing units. Building enclosure repairs include masonry restoration, window replacement, and roofing replacement.
Built in 1888 in the Queen Anne style, the building features brick masonry, sandstone, slate, and terra cotta accents. We are providing complete building envelope repair design services including drawings and specifications.
CopelandBEC has been engaged to provide building envelope consulting for a planned renovation at historic Rollins Chapel on the campus of Dartmouth College in Hanover, NH. We’re excited to join a talented team including Jones Architecture of Salem, MA and RFS Engineering of Laconia, NH.
Rollins Chapel at Dartmouth College
Since its dedication in 1885 Rollins Chapel has served as the College’s spiritual center…Work began on the new chapel in June 1884. The building, which President Lord described as “Romanesque in general style with entrances under heavy round arches,” was constructed of pink granite with red sandstone trimming. Its floor plan was in the form of a Greek cross, and it had a seating capacity of about 600. The architect was John L. Faxon of Boston.
The planned renovation includes both interior and exterior repairs. We’ll be consulting on the design for repairs to below-grade waterproofing systems, mass masonry exterior walls, and stained glass windows.
CopelandBEC staff have extensive experience on historic restoration projects, including work at the New York State Capitol and Massachusetts State House. More recently CopelandBEC has assisted with building envelope repairs at historic buildings on the campuses of Harvard University in Cambridge, MA and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Falmouth, MA.
We’re eager to apply our expertise to this beautiful building at Dartmouth College.
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.
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.
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.
