I decided to take a little different of an approach for the
blog this week. Up top I’ll hit a couple
of news items but for the 2nd half I have an extremely interesting interview
with a guy who I consider to be one of the most fascinating in our industry today.
Elsewhere….
-- So is it me or did the fact that the General Service
Administration noting that they have been looking at LEED for “almost a year
and half” just make you sad? Seriously
it should never take that long or am I missing something? Yes they studied 160
tools and standards, (there’s really that many? My goodness) but does it really
take that long to eventually decide on the biggest and most prominent one?
-- A website for you to absolutely visit and bookmark. The Efficient Window Collaborative has added
to their already amazing site and it now is even better. The new window selection tool is
tremendous. Kudos to Kerry Haglund and
her team for once again raising the bar when it comes to educational resources.
-- While we’re in congratulatory mode, we’ll send some congrats
out to Alissa Schmidt of Viracon for winning a Distinguished Alumni award from
her alma mater Minnesota State- Mankato.
Alissa represents our industry well and it’s great her efforts are being
recognized!
-- Ok now on to the interview portion… this week I tracked down
Avi Bar, Vice President, Architectural Products, Advanced Glazing (Solera
Panels) to get his take on the current code landscape and more. I met Avi 2 years ago and was extremely
impressed by his intelligence and focus.
When the code discussion started to heat up, I thought getting Avi’s
opinion would be interesting. And after
getting his answers I have no doubt that this will surely get some people talking.
Max: The
building/energy code process continues to evolve. As someone that follows it the way you do,
what’s your take on where the codes are now and where they are going?
Avi: I think there are two primary shifts now in code.
Energy codes getting stricter and becoming mandatory vs. voluntary. The codes
are reflecting the rising energy costs and environmental challenges. The codes
recognize that the building envelope plays a significant role in addressing
these challenges. However most advances have been predominantly incremental as
we try to tweak existing technologies and materials. This in turn results in
incremental code changes. All the evidence however indicates that we need a
more radical change in energy codes. This will be fed by two possible triggers.
An event that forces more scarcity of fossil fuels or breakthrough technologies
to compete. We hope that the former doesn’t have to occur before the latter.
There are materials such as ours that are making that true. In Europe code
tends to be more stringent and mandatory as energy costs are substantially
higher but the net result is better buildings, and more innovation and greater
value in the derived from the glass industry. Another point of interest is that
energy metrics for buildings are now factoring quantifiable benefits to the use
of daylighting strategically as the primary lighting source during usable
hours.
Max: What’s your take
on the ASHRAE issue and the on-going discussions/angst that is seemingly pretty
active in our industry now?
Avi: Here is
the basic premise. ASHRAE standards are driven by two primary conditions.
a) Higher
energy costs
b)
Environmental stewardess
Both these
conditions are important and real and should not be ignored. Asking ASHRAE to
relax rules and code will compromise buildings ability to be sustainable from
an environmental and financial standpoint.
The codes are
not going to get less stringent. The voluntary nature is not going to spread.
Instead I predict (as we can see everywhere else in the world), the codes will
get more stringent and mandatory. We can sit and cry about it or we can rise to
the challenge.
The issue the
glass industry is trying to address is that most current glass products are
based on a composition that is fundamentally flawed. Glass is a highly
conductive material. Air in the units (or gasses, which are highly prone to
leakage) are highly convective. Low-e is reaching its maximum value in reducing
U Values. Spacers are highly conductive too. Therefore the fundamental construct
of glass is challenged as its only potential improvement is incremental. Even
with triple glazed units which add cost due to additional material and
installation costs. Over and above this, vision glass struggles to deal with
the daylighting question appropriately since it introduces heat and glare
unless controlled through shading devices, which adds more cost.
So given
these constraints it’s obvious that the "Nemesis / Enemy " is the
code. If you can't improve then the code is too strict.
But that does
not have to be the case. If we look at using innovation and technology to
change the construct and paradigms on the glazing, then we could retain our
position on buildings. There is much work to be done in this realm but it's not
far off. Therefore my recommendation is instead of blaming ASHRAE and seeking
lobbying money to fight it, let's invest this money in innovating and lower
material costs.
The glass
industry in short needs to embrace two fundamental things
a) Innovation
b) Education
throughout the value chain
Next week, part
2 with Avi including where the Architectural community weighs in on this.
LINKS of the
WEEK
The old “hotmail.com” address is now dead. Wow.
Big question for business owners, replace the server or go
to cloud based computing?
This is a school that gets it, a “nice weather” day!
VIDEO of the WEEK
Take the next 6 minutes and see why the Portland Timber
organization is one to be admired. An
8-year-old boy with cancer gets his wish, and the Timbers pull out all of the
stops. Really impressive to make the
effort and build the memory here.
