Vaisala headquarters, Louisville, Colo.

by Christopher Brinckerhoff | 16 April 2025 6:00 am

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Finland-based Vaisala embarked on a project to erect a cutting-edge U.S. headquarters in Louisville, Colo., which company officials say shows “its unwavering dedication to sustainability.” S-5!, a leader in metal roof attachments, helped them to achieve their goals.

The project encompassed constructing a new building seamlessly integrated with the existing one, fostering a fluid indoor-outdoor campus designed to cater to customers, employees, researchers, and partners alike.

Inspired by the sleek, minimalist design ethos of its Scandinavian headquarters, the new structure achieves net-zero energy through a fusion of sustainable design features. Among these are a state-of-the-art, 492-panel rooftop solar array, a VRF mechanical system (HVAC), and a vertical, double-skin curtain wall facade, all geared towards minimizing energy consumption.

The building incorporates a pre-existing 101kW tilted solar array on the lower south building’s TPO roof, the S-5-U Mini/Unirac rail-based solar racking system on the upper standing seam metal roof, and a vertical facade standing seam wall-mounted array secured in place utilizing the S-5! PVKIT rail-less solar mounting solution. Together, the metal rooftop solar systems produce 228kW.

The owner desired a sleek-looking, low-profile system that would complement the look of the roof and the high-end, architecturally designed building. The main challenge was to provide an aesthetically pleasing, vertically mounted solar PV array on the existing standing seam facade wall, including engineering sign-off on the solution. A conventional, heavy rail-mounted system was deemed unsuitable for the facade wall.

The facade-mounted array not only needed to look impressive, as it would be highly visible for those who arrived at the Vaisala building, but it also needed to withstand tremendous wind loads. This area of Colorado experiences wind speeds of up to 233 km/h (145 mph) and Category C exposure, so Vaisala needed a system that could withstand extreme wind conditions.

The customer sought the most aesthetically pleasing, lightweight, and wind-resistant solution for vertically mounting its solar array to a standing seam facade wall without compromising the profile’s integrity. The solar mountings provided a low-profile, sleek solution to secure the solar array to the facade wall. They enabled the owner to achieve a design engineered to withstand the region’s high winds. Directly attaching the PV to the seams provided installation efficiency and flexibility and distributed the load more uniformly into the structure.

The clamps perform a secondary function as wind clamps, often called “external seam clamps” (ESC). These wind clamps measurably increase the roof’s wind uplift resistance capacity, preventing multiple modes of failure.

Over time, the solar system will offset 69 percent of the building’s electrical consumption. The project has achieved an impressive Energy Use Intensity (EUI) of 28, demonstrating exceptional energy performance.

Architect: OZ Architecture, ozarch.com[2]
Structural engineer: Brett Robinson of JVA Consulting Engineers, jvajva.com[3]
Solar designer & installer: Namaste Solar, namastesolar.com[4]
Module manufacturer: Hanwha QCell, us.qcells.com[5]
Inverter manufacturer: CPS
Roofing contractor: B&M Roofing, bmroofing.com[6]
Solar mounts: S-5!, s-5.com[7]

 

Source URL: https://www.metalconstructionnews.com/projects/office-mixed-use/vaisala-louisville-colo/

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