In this video I want to share with you a solar installation that I was responsible for in the town of Vail, Colorado. The structure that you are looking at is a Gerald Ford amphitheater, and it is a coveted structure in the town because it brings the community as well as people from all around the world into a performing arts center. The town is very supportive of the arts, and they also wanted to show the community that they were supportive of solar power generation.

So as a result, they wanted me to present to them an efficient design that would allow them to accomplish offsetting energy at this world-renowned structure. The project was initially brought to me by Zehren Architects, who act as a plan holder for the entire park area. They had a solar study that was presented to me, and they wanted me to review the study to see if it made sense for the harsh mountain environment.

After reviewing the study, it was apparent to me that I needed immediately to recommend to them solar panels and a racking mounting fashion that would withstand the high snow load for this area, because as you can see, the structure itself has a very low-pitched roof system. Here you can see three of the four roof leaves, and they are at approximately a 12% pitch. Unfortunately, three of the four of the roof panels were not eligible for solar due to their orientation.

The first thing that I had to consider was how are we going to fasten our racking system to a roofing profile that is very shallow? And this project was not only a solar installation, but it was also going to be a roof membrane replacement. So, I had to work closely with the roofer to better understand the roof membrane installation process, but also select a fastening product that would work with that type of TPO roof membrane while we are also coordinating the coloring of our products to match the roofer's new roof membrane.

We had to perform glare studies as well, because if we were to propose a solar array on one of the roof planes, we needed to make sure that no audience members would be distracted by a glare during a performance. So as a result, we performed our glare study and found that indeed there would be no risk of glare to any audience member. Now the racking itself was a huge undertaking because of the huge snow load. We are talking about 120 pounds per square foot of load on this roof.

So, we had to make sure that the racking was going to not only support the solar modules, but be fastened to the roof so that there would be no movement of any component that we are installing. You can see here the racking method was to double up the racking so that there was more reinforcement for the panels so they would not flex if there was a large live load on them.

The next decision I had to make was, what solar panel are we going to select that could withstand this large load of snow during the winter? There's only a couple out there on the market, and we decided to use the REC panel to accomplish this for our client. The project was 58 kilowatts worth of solar for our client, and this offset about 25% of the structure's electrical usage.

It was a challenging project from a utility standpoint as well because this was a very large three-phase service, and the local utility had limits on how much solar could be installed for net metering, and there was a 25-kilowatt cap to that. So, the only other way that we could install the remaining solar was to design a second system that would be connected via what the Utility calls a DER gen tariff method, which is basically an interconnection after the meter. So, you can see in this diagram there are two meters.

There is one here that has a production meter, which is going to be used for the DER gen tariff connection, and there is another meter up here, and that is going to be used for the 25 kilowatts of net metering solar power generation for our client. 

This project was completed in 2023, and by then the Inflation Reduction Act had been placed into action. So, at that time, I was able to assist the client with understanding the further incentives that were placed within the Inflation Reduction Act for both nonprofit and municipal clients.

Today the Vail community gathers on a weekly basis to enjoy performances from world-renowned musicians and dance companies, and because of this solar power generation installation, there now is a reminder that the community is in support of renewable energy as well.

What I'd like to talk about in this video is incorporating water features into landscape design. In this example, this is a Mountain Zen theme design where we wanted to incorporate a water feature symbolic of life for the client, reminding them of life. And in this case, we also wanted to also use a system that didn't splash a lot, so we incorporated a drainage below the spillway, but still make that connection to the Mountain Zen material. So we ended up placing this Mexican beach pebbles on top of the grate so you wouldn’t see the grate.

Now, the design started out with a conversation between myself and the client, and what we figured out in that conversation is we really wanted to use a monolithic piece of stone, so we had some limitations because of size and weight, and how we were gonna get this stone to the site, but what we found is that we could work with approximately a 8 foot by 4 foot wide, and a foot thick piece of stone. So what I love about this project is that our mason, Alasio Perez, overheard our conversation, and that conversation had to do with a famous sculptor named Isamu Noguchi. And once he heard that name, he had to let himself be heard, and he said I too love to sculpt and I can do this.

So we showed him some sketches, and we ended up doing a working drawing and he took it to his yard and this is what he came up with. And the client couldn’t have been happier. The client loved that there was a higher basin with a low spillway into a textured spillway, then the water would fall over. So Alasio did a wonderful job on this.

The infrastructure was a really interesting part of the project too because we had to think about how we were gonna recycle the water in an efficient way so what we came up with was a closed system with a pump that was buried in the basin itself. So this is a look at the basin before the Mexican pebbles were put on the grate, and unfinished but getting very close at this point in the project to actually place the sculptural water feature onto the sidewall.

Now, the client loves the idea of having the sculpture be part of their everyday environment. So we placed this outside the dining room. And this is also a reminder to the client that this is a feature that is part of a harmonized environment that is surrounding us at all times, so that connection to the outdoor space – even from the indoors – is an important design move that we incorporated.

Now, the water feature is active seasonally, and what we found is that we loved the fact that it flowed consistently, it attracted wildlife, and the client couldn’t have been happier.

In this video, I wanted to share with you a mountain design project that I was responsible for in Creamery Ranch, which is near Edwards, Colorado, and that is just west of Vale by about 20 miles on I-70 in the Central Rocky Mountains. My role in this project was as landscape architect, as well as a solar consultant. And this project focused on a new construction layout that incorporated numerous outdoor rooms that would help our client maintain mindful awareness of their surrounding landscape, but also improved their well-being by exploring the new gardens and outdoor rooms that I designed. The first element of the design was the entry to the home.

And because this client was an elderly couple, they were planning ahead and wanted to have a fully accessible ADA ramp installed. So, I ended up designing the ramp that took them through the landscape so that they could experience the colors and the textures of the plants, but also see the sculptures along their journey as they got to the front door. 

The planting scheme for this project really was based from my signature design motif of Mountain Zen. And here I use small evergreen plants.  I use plants that have rich, colorful leaves, seasonal interest, and, of course, an emphasis on changing textures on the ground plane. One of the design elements that I repeated in this master plan was the use of outdoor sculpture galleries. Here is an example of one on the entry corridor of the home. I worked with an artist from New Mexico to select the stone sculpture for each individual gallery. And here you can see I placed it within a small Mexican beach pebble that could be raked daily, but nestled from a composition standpoint that you could see it from not only the exterior, but also from when you are in the house, so that you can be reminded about the outdoor spaces around you. 

This corner of the house was designed as a meditation garden. And here you can see the fruitless double bloom snow crab apple. And they are in a Bosque fashion. And this meditation room was adjacent to the client's master bedroom.  Next to the Bosque you can see a pergola, which was an architectural feature that I introduced to the client and the architect, because I thought it would be necessary to help combat the harsh Colorado sun, but also be used as an element that we could aid the transitional spaces between architecture and the outdoor rooms. 

From above you can see the meditation garden is full of different blooms, as well as Ouray slate boulders.  And then you can see a pathway of Colorado buff stone that travels throughout the site with a bridge that goes over a waterway that divides the garden. The waterway provided another stimulus for sound in this case. And a spillway was used on the far end. And during the warmer months, if the client cracked their window of their master bedroom, they could hear this water hitting itself and providing a tranquil, peaceful environment. 

From inside, it was important for me to understand the architect's layout.  And this architect was from Chicago and shared with me the layouts before my design so that I could better understand the relationship between the indoor and the outdoor space. So, to the left here, you can see the meditation garden and the Bosca trees. And to the right, you can see how we left this view corridor wide open so that the client could be constantly reminded that the mountains and the meadows are their neighbors. 

In this project, we wanted to keep the eye moving throughout the experienced user.  So, we provided stopping places such as this Ouray slate boulder where you could sit down in the garden, contemplate underneath the blooms of the crab apple trees. But as you can see in the distance, there is also another element, a water feature, that was sculpted by a local artist from a plan that I created. And this is just a really great example of setting up the user for constant discovery, which I love to do in all my designs.

That relationship between indoor and outdoor space was a constant effort to try to achieve within this design. In the dining room, you can see the sculpture, water sculpture in the background. You can see the beautiful high alpine meadows that we wanted to preserve the views to. The relationship between indoor and outdoor is of utmost importance. My mountain Zen design style uses many different elements. We use plants such as perennials, native grass seeds, wildflower seeds, trees, shrubs, but also within the built environment, you can see we use sculptures and interesting stones. We use pea gravel that can be raked in detail and plant containers.  The mountain Zen styling is really a juxtaposition of the two things, the built environment and the natural environment. 

I am going to return to this pergola idea because this was an important architectural element that we used throughout the project and I convinced the team to do so. Now the architect did a wonderful job of integrating it into the architectural styling that they brought to the table. And, you can see the dappling of the shade below on the ground, the texture it creates.  It creates a cooler environment so that you can walk through the design space more comfortably. 

I also mentioned to you that I was the solar consultant for this project and in this county, Eagle County, there is what we call an eco-build fee. So, if any client wants to include snowmelt on their driveway or install a spa or a pool, that is considered wasteful energy and is taxed. But the county also allows you to offset those fees 100% if you install solar.  COLAS Design was a one-stop shop for this client where we could install the solar in a meaningful way in a position on the ground plane because we did not have room on the roof plane to install the panels.  So, we were meticulous in the location of this, not only to maximize the solar power production, but also to be mindful about the views towards the array so that we could screen the array tables with native vegetation.

In this design, I was also responsible for thinking about the spaces, not only for daytime use, but for nighttime use. Here is an example of an outdoor room that the couple can gather around a fire pit to enjoy the celestial sky at night, but also be warmed by the fire next to them. 

At COLAS Design, I strive to create meaningful landscape architecture, and I want to enhance your well-being.  This is an example of an outdoor spa room that was created adjacent to a rose garden beneath the Japanese-inspired pergola.  We want to be able to allow our clients to not only feel like they are safe and comfortable inside, but also outside. So, these spaces that you see in front of you are created with that in mind. 

The mountain Zen styling differs from every project. Each project presents a different set of needs, but there is also a specific spirit to each site that I strive to understand before I start designing. There is no doubt about it, the coordination and communication between the entire design team, if that is good, is one of the strongest reasons that our projects can be as successful as they are.

Welcome to Eagle, Colorado. The town of Eagle is just west of Vail, Colorado by about 30 miles on I-70 in the Central Rocky Mountains. In this video I wanted to share with you a municipal solar installation that I was responsible for with Sunsense.  The project location is the Eagle County Government Campus, which is this area here. The client requested that Sunsense install on two buildings, the financial building as well as the facilities building, about 50 kilowatts worth of solar, and that would be used to offset about 50% of that meter’s current usage. 

Now this project had many challenges, but the biggest challenge was probably the 40 plus roof angle that the crews had to install on. This was a standing seam roof, but because of that we had to take extra safety precautions with our tie-ins on the ridge line of the roof to make sure everybody was safe during the entire installation. Now here you can see our designer's racking out of the financial building, and you can see there's dimensions throughout, and these dimensions are very helpful to our crews because when they are out in the field, they need to verify whether the plans reflect the real conditions properly. You can also see here that a quick calculation was done to further understand what impact of added weight this design would have on the structure.  There is about 2.76 pounds per square foot, which is not a lot when you think about it, but it is a number that we must verify to know that the structural integrity of our design is complete. 

Once the crews are out in the field, the first thing they do is measure the infield conditions so that we can make sure that the layout is going to be proper. And here once the verifications have been done, the crew starts to build the racking after placing the standing seam clamps down on the standing seams. You can see here an aesthetic decision being made because of the two gables and the array being in the middle of them. The crews wanted to pay special attention to centering this array evenly on both sides so that not only does it look centered, but the lines that occur from the spaces between the modules will also run parallel with the standing seam roof lines themselves. Now our crews were amazing on this steep roof. I learned a few tricks and for all your newbies out there, one thing you can do as safety precaution is to spread a little sugary soda on the standing seam roof, let it dry, and then you can walk on the roof with much more traction.

The panelization of the project was equally challenging. Imagine carrying an extra 40 pounds of weight on the shoulder up the steep roof. Well, our crews did it seamlessly and everyone here took turns carrying different components to their respective locations. When the panels are being installed on the racking, you can see that this crew wanted to start at the bottom and then panelize from the top down. The reason behind this is so that they can have two square edges to put a new panel and that was a successful strategy for this installation.

This is the finished product of the financial building.  As you can see, the black-on-black modules with black frames are really blending into the architecture and when you pass this building, you barely notice that there is solar on the building at all unless you knew what you were looking for. The facilities building was equally as easy, but a little bit smaller in scope and they decided to place the racking from the top down because they had tie-in clamps to use for the ropes and they felt that this would be the best strategy for this site.

You can see them building the racking and then adding the panels and lastly, they have a finished product from a panel install standpoint, but then they must wire.  You can imagine pulling all the wire through conduit on the interior of the building, but first you need to enter the interior from the top of the roof in which you installed the solar panels on. Once you are inside, you have lots of different angles.  You must bend pipe and take this wire to an inverter and a point of interconnection to your grid.  This is the facilities project finished and this is both the financial building and the facilities structure finished.  Since this project, Sunsense has done several other projects with Eagle County, Colorado and we continue to build our relationship with them and look forward to our next project for any municipal party that is interested in solar photovoltaic or energy storage installation.

Hi, in this video, I wanted to share with you a municipal solar installation that Sunsense installed for Eagle County Government, which is in Eagle, Colorado. This project was an effort to bring this new construction structure to a net-zero status and to aid with the numerous apartments, electric bills moving into the future. The project was a new construction project and, thankfully, I was involved very early in the design process because this project took on several different roof fastening methods that we had to figure out well before the end of construction.

The two methods of fastening the solar panels to the roof of this multifamily apartment complex was first a standard flush roof mount system that we could install posts, then the racking and these solar panels would be approximately five inches off that roof plane. The second form of fastening was through a mechanically fastened method and this was because we had a tilted array layout that allowed us to install on a flat roof and we could fasten to the trusses below the roof membrane, but where our posts did not hit the trusses, we had to install blocking with the general contractor so that we could fasten to that blocking and meet all the Eagle County building requirements as a result. Here you can see the flat roof mount installation.

You see three different tables and they're all at a very moderate tilt at 20 degrees and there's a number of reasons for that, but the primary reason is because the design review board in this jurisdiction did not want the arrays to be visible from the street.  Here is an example of the flush roof mount installation where the panels are approximately five inches off of the roof plane and this is considered a standard installation where our crews install the posts prior to the roofer installing the shingles. The roofer can come back and put the shingles around our posts so that we can minimize any type of potential roof damage. 

This project was an interesting one from a utility standpoint as well.  We worked closely with Holy Cross Energy and negotiated a new form of interconnection for this building type. Typically, when there were 20 different apartments, each apartment would have to have their own separate solar PV system and their own disconnect and everything would be running through each individual apartment's meter. In this case, we negotiated with the Utility so that we could have one master House meter ahead of the meter bank and we could use that power generation and distribute it to each one of the apartments in an equal fashion. This is an example of the House meter.  This House meter also shows us what kind of service this is. This is a three-phase project so we had to keep that in mind when we were selecting all our electrical components for the project.  One of the most important components was deciding on what kind of tilted array for the flat roof installation we were going to choose and we ran with our good friends SunModo and their tilted “Sun Turf” racking system. This is a very lightweight but rather convenient to install type of racking that meets all the Eagle County standards from a building standpoint and allows us to lay the panels in a landscape fashion minimizing the height of the array.  As I mentioned before we wanted to do that because we do not want to be able to see this array from the street level and we performed several studies prior to presenting our project to the local jurisdiction so that we could show them that indeed from the street level you could not see the arrays and if you could it was just a very brief instant and nothing to attract your attention in that direction.

The architect and Sunsense worked very closely so that we could figure out whether we needed to have a parapet wall put in these areas where the arrays were proposed. In some cases, we ended up putting a breathable parapet wall that helped shade or screen the array from the eye at street level. We worked closely with the engineers from SunModo to come up with a proper fastening method for these flat roof arrays. It is very important because we not only want to be able to fasten both to the trusses or the blocking but we also want the snow to shed in winter time and not collect quickly and prohibit the solar power generation so indeed we lifted the array off the roof plane two feet to accomplish this. This is an early diagram of that flat roof array racking. Here you can see that the bottom edge of the solar panels are about 18 inches off the ground. When we looked at the amount of snow this site can potentially gather, we changed that to two feet but you can also see how the array can tilt which is very convenient especially in this project so that we could tilt the array below any type of visible connection with the ground plane. This is the finished product on the flat roof and as you can see it's very customized and we had to work closely with the general contractor well before the finish of the construction of this building because of things like mechanical features, air conditioners, vents that all needed to be on the roof plane but we don't want them underneath our arrays so it was an important back and forth communication so that we could communicate to the contractor where we needed the mechanical elements to be located on this roof so that the array could fit properly and then also operate at maximum capacity.

This project with Eagle County Colorado was a complete success. The building to this day is being used by multiple apartment owners and is benefiting from the solar power generation.