In June Tecta America Corp. announced the launch of Tecta Solar, a division of the company dedicated to the development of turnkey solar energy systems. Tecta America Corp., headquartered in Skokie, Ill., is the largest commercial roofing company in the country. It has more than 50 locations and more than 3,500 employees.

Sometimes competitors can work together in a common cause, and there’s no cause more important in construction than worker safety.

As health care reform becomes a key focus of the Obama administration, the media has been flooded with reports on the rising costs of health care insurance.

Yesterday was the live presentation of our Architectural Roofing & Waterproofing webinar titled “Proper Drain Design,” conducted by ARW Editorial Director and Roofing Contractor technical columnist John D’Annunzio.

For those of us in the Midwest, it’s been a cold start to spring. Winter has held on a bit longer than usual, and it’s just a hunch but I think that’s part of the reason the economy is still in the doldrums. It seems people have been in a sort of hibernation, waiting for things to pick up.

At the corner of Woodward and Jefferson in downtown Detroit, the Coleman A. Young Municipal Center houses courtrooms, city offices and the mayor’s office. It’s also famous for the statue that abuts it-Marshall Fredericks’ bronze statue “the Spirit of Detroit”-or, as it’s also known, the Jolly Green Giant.

I just heard about an interesting new product the other day. Energy Alternatives LLC announced the introduction of its Greenward Ridge Vent. According to Ted Poulos, Vice President of Energy Alternatives, the patent-pending design harvests ambient hot attic air as it escapes through the ridge of the roof.

In the world of solar roofing, the solar panels commonly output direct current (DC), which is commonly channeled to an inverter, which converts it to alternating current (AC). One company looking to eliminate wiring to a large central inverter is Akeena Solar (www.akeena.com), headquartered in Los Gatos, Calif.

The concept is fascinating: You just send in the address of a residential or commercial building, and you receive a detailed report with an aerial photo and line drawings of the roof with length, pitch and area noted for easy and accurate estimates and professional presentations.

If you’ve been by the EternaBond booth at a trade show, perhaps Chris Margarites has flagged you down and given you this demonstration: He uses his EternaBond roofing tape to join a piece of metal to a piece of EPDM to a piece of PVC to a piece of just about anything and dares attendees to pull them apart.