Photos courtesy of The Bright Group Inc., Napa, Calif.
Photos courtesy of The Bright Group Inc., Napa, Calif.
Foster's Wine Estates Americas Co., headquartered in Napa, Calif., is an operating company of Foster's Group Ltd., based in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Foster's Wine Estates Americas produces premium-quality wines, including Beringer, Lindemans, Penfolds, Rosemount Estate and Wolf Blass, and sells about 20 million cases of wine per year.
Foster's Wine Estates Americas has nine wineries throughout California, four in Napa. In June 2007, The Bright Group Inc., Napa, a company that represents California-based commercial roofing and waterproofing product manufacturers, was asked to evaluate Foster's Wine Estates Americas' roofing program. As part of its evaluation, The Bright Group proposed and negotiated the installation of solar roof systems at three wineries in Napa, including Beringer, Stags' Leap and Etude Wineries, as well as Asti Winery in Cloverdale, Calif.
The wineries would host the solar roof systems for 25 years and purchase electricity at a reduced rate from Perpetual Energy Systems LLC, Woodland Hills, Calif., the project financier. Perpetual Energy Systems would own the solar systems, renewable energy certificates and carbon credits determined by the systems' output and would use conventional financing, construction, and permanent debt and equity, as well as federal energy tax credits, to fund the entire installation without capital investment from Foster's Wine Estates Americas.
Assembling a team
The Bright Group conducted predevelopment engineering and design of the new roof systems and enlisted SolarNet,™ Healdsburg, Calif., to coordinate and co-develop the project. SolarNet then enlisted Stellar Energy Solutions, Healdsburg, as the project's solar engineer and general contractor.
However, before the solar arrays could be installed, The Bright Group needed a roofing contractor to re-cover the wineries' existing roof systems. Having previously worked with D.C. Taylor Co., Cedar Rapids, Iowa, The Bright Group asked the company to install new single-ply roof systems at the wineries.
"The Bright Group has a comfort level with D.C. Taylor's ability to handle a project of this magnitude and degree of difficulty," says Michael O'Bryant, D.C. Taylor's solar roofing project development manager. "D.C. Taylor also has the resources to roof 10 buildings in four locations simultaneously."
Multiple installations
D.C. Taylor began work at the wineries in August 2008.
"Work was required to be completed by the beginning of Foster's Wine Estates Americas' October harvest," O'Bryant says.
D.C. Taylor was asked to furnish and install about 4,000 squares of new roofing material and be substantially completed with the project in 30 days. The company used 10 crews with a total of 55 workers.
"The 400,000 square feet of existing roof systems consisted of fiberglass cap sheets, TPO and metal roofing materials," O'Bryant says. "All roofs were eligible for re-cover. All existing insulation was salvaged. No existing roofing material was put into landfills."
D.C. Taylor installed temporary parapet wall guardrails during reroofing, as well as a mobile anchorage system, lanyards and harnesses.
"Permanent safety measures were installed when reroofing was complete," O'Bryant says. "These included skylight fall protection and permanent fall-restraint standing-seam roof clamps. Roofs were accessed by ladders, permanent stairways, a ladder and roof hatch, and a temporary scissor lift."
The roofing materials for the project were manufactured specifically for The Bright Group to meet U.S. Food and Drug Administration requirements.
"Burke Industries manufactured a Bright NRG-65 single-ply membrane using a Hypalon® formulation for the collection of potable water to ensure there is no contamination of groundwater from biocides leeching out of the membrane," O'Bryant says. "United Coatings formulated a Bright NRG Gloss coating consisting of a modified high-tensile acrylic formulation to provide a gloss finish to maintain a cleaner roof surface during a long time period."
D.C. Taylor used two installation methods for the single-ply membranes.
"The first method was a negative-pressure system using pressure equalization vents to resist wind-uplift forces on the roof membranes," O'Bryant says. "For steeper roof slopes, we used mechanically fastened systems."
After D.C. Taylor completed its work, Stellar Energy Solutions installed the combined 2.8-megawatt solar arrays, which include 12,900 solar modules from Sharp Solar Energy Solutions Group. A 1.34-megawatt array was installed on Beringer Winery, making it the largest total solar energy system in the U.S. wine industry.
According to SolarNet, the four installations combined will produce 3.8 million kilowatt hours of renewable electricity and offset 2 million pounds of carbon dioxide per year.
Time crunch
D.C. Taylor faced some stringent schedule requirements during its work for Foster's Wine Estates Americas.
"The project had to be completed before the annual harvest and crush," O'Bryant says. "All the wineries are unique in that different grapes are harvested and crushed at different times. We had to adjust our schedule and move workers from site to site while completing the work according to Occupational Safety and Health Administration requirements and unique requirements by Foster's Wine Estates Americas."
The schedule requirements caused some other issues for D.C. Taylor.
"Much of the roofing material, as well as some of the safety systems, were specially ordered," O'Bryant says. "The time constraints did not provide us our usual pre-job planning time and the ability to order and receive many of our materials as we usually do, which made things difficult."
Rising to the occasion
Through a lot of hard work, D.C. Taylor's work at the four wineries was substantially completed on time in September 2008. And O'Bryant is pleased with the finished result.
"Watching our crews rise to the occasion and complete the project on schedule was rewarding," he says. "Meticulous scheduling for this 15,000-manhour job and the ability to bring in crews from our other locations throughout the country contributed to the project's success."
Ashley St. John is Professional Roofing's associate editor.
Project name: Foster's Wine Estates Americas Co.
Project location: Napa, Calif., and Cloverdale, Calif.
Project duration: August 2008-September 2008
Roof system type: Single-ply
Roofing contractor: D.C. Taylor Co., Cedar Rapids, Iowa
Roofing materials manufacturers: Burke Industries Inc., San Jose, Calif., and United Coatings, Spokane Valley, Wash.
COMMENTS
Be the first to comment. Please log in to leave a comment.