Page 30 - College Planning & Management, January/February 2019

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DRYVIT SYSTEMS, INC.
Solving Renovation Challenges With NewBrick
30 COLLEGE PLANNING & MANAGEMENT / JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2019 WEBCPM.COM
OWENS COMMUNITY COLLEGE, A comprehensive community college es- tablished in 1965, provides educational
opportunities and training to residents in the Toledo, OH, area. As with many campuses, the buildings are brick clad, which provides a charming and uniform identity and aesthetic.
The only problem? This administration building was leaking. Leaky buildings can lead to serious issues such as mold affecting air quality and heating, ventilation, and air conditioning systems.
Danielle Tracy, executive director of operations at Owens Community College, said that for years the building was under performing. “People would complain all the time that they had water coming directly in their windows,” she says.
The school was required to change out ceiling tiles and constantly perform drywall repairs and painting around the windows just to keep this building presentable. That’s a lot of work that certainly proved costly to maintain over several years of repairs.
The college hired SSOE Architects, who in turn hired a third-party forensic building envelope specialist to evaluate the build- ing. They presented a couple of options for consideration. One possible option was to completely remove all the clay brick, put in flashing, and then put all the clay brick back. The college judged the brick retrofit option too invasive and would cause a lot of distur- bance to building occupants for a long time.
The college went with SSOE’s NewBrick
recommendation, which turned out to “be a great compromise between wanting to keep the brick look of our building and solving our water infiltration problem.”
After confirming water intrusion linked primarily to dew point and thermal bridg- ing challenges, a water vapor transmission analysis revealed that the best remedy to the water intrusion was to adhere a two- inch NewBrick Continuous Insulation (CI) system on the outside of the building and then incorporate NewBrick on the outside envelope to maintain the look that the campus needed to achieve.
“The first time I saw it, I was honestly re- ally impressed that it was just a brick veneer on the outside. I couldn’t believe that’s what it looked like. And then to see the insulation behind each of the brick veneer pieces was even more impressive,” Tracy says.
When asked if there were any skeptics to using NewBrick during the decision-making process, Tracy chuckled and identified one clear skeptic. “My dad is a bricklayer by trade. As a lifelong bricklayer, he was skepti- cal of a system that was anything other than the traditional clay brick that he used
during his career.”
But once he saw the finished product,
he became a believer. “He said ‘that’s pretty cool,’ which from him was a good validation that we made the right choice,” Tracy says. What’s next for Tracy and the Owens Community College Campus? More NewBrick renovations. They are already planning the next NewBrick renovation, as they have several other buildings with water intrusion issues since the original construction took place in the 1960s.
“There’s a lot of colleges and universities that have rich history. And, of course, you want to preserve that through the look of your buildings. When you have alumnus that come back to your campus, they want to feel like this was where they went to college,” Tracy explains. “This was where they spent their higher education, this is where they got their degree. You don’t want to dramatically change the look of your campus because you don’t get that buy-in from people who went there and had a connection to your campus. So, we were excited that we were able to preserve the look of our campus and solve our problem.” CPM