For seeing clearly under the water, whatever happened to glass-bottomed boats? If the water was shallow enough, you could see what was happening below. And if the glass broke, at least you had a life preserver nearby (or should have had), or you could swim to shore. Ah, the good ol’ days …

But the USGNN.com™ newsletter recently had a story on a glass-bottom gondola on a hot-air balloon. As if looking over the edge of a wicker basket X number of feet up in the air wasn’t enough. And having nothing between you and the ground except the wicker basket bottom was SO much more comforting. Right.

This glass bottom thing’s gone too far. Don’t get me wrong, I like tall buildings, but I will admit I like something very firm, visually and literally, under my feet. I go in tall buildings all the time, prefer the inside, not the outside for obvious reasons. But some of these recent projects really test one’s resolve.

We have a glass-bottomed horseshoe cantilevered out over the Grand Canyon. As if standing a couple of hundred feet back looking out over the edge isn’t impressive enough. I hear tell they make you take off your shoes and put on cloth footies so the glass isn’t scratched, which keeps the view unobstructed. Sure it isn’t to make sure the scratches don’t lead to glass breakage and the sudden need for a base-jumping parachute?

We have glass-bottomed observation platforms sticking out of tall buildings such as the Sears Tower (sorry, Willis – talk about a name change that’ll never take) in Chicago. They push it out during business hours from the observation deck 102 stories up and pull it in at night. And you can look straight down. To the street. They make you wear cloth footies too, probably for the same reasons as above. No thanks. It’s all I could do to get on a jobsite personnel lift that first time with a steel or aluminum diamond plate floor between me and the ground. Overcoming that fear only over time. Frequency makes the heart stouter, but doesn’t lessen the initial impact.

Maybe that’s the attraction for all the glass bottom stuff:  how often are you really going to do it? And if you live, you can tell anybody who will listen all about it …

We’re also doing glass floors here at TGP. Some glass floors don’t have the same visual impact as the Sears Tower observation deck because you don’t want people to be able to look up from below, so the glass is translucent. But at TGP, true to our lineage, a floor can be fire-rated. Can you imagine having to exit a building across a floor where there’s a fire below? The floors have been tested by UL, and they are safe. But who’da thunk it?

So what’s next?  Or better yet, what things should never have glass-bottom prefixes attached to them?

Glass-bottomed submarines? They make spherical domes of glass for deep-water submersibles, or are they acrylic? That’s scary enough! One crack in that glass, and a gazillion feet from the surface it’s probably too late to check the warranty, or ask for the manufacturer to come out to the site for an inspection, don’t you think?

Glass-bottomed airplanes? Boeing’s just getting a 787 off the ground that’s supposed to be mostly composites, but fiberglass or carbon fiber are not the same as a clear bottom. And if they have to design the glass to flex, no thanks. I’ve stood in test chambers for 15-minute dynamic tests and seen glass flex. It’s never broken, but if it had, at least you’re standing on a floor inside the chamber. What happens at 30,000 feet if the glass breaks on the bottom of an airplane? Do you really want to see the ground going by at 180 mph at take off and landing? Not me.

I know there are people who ride hanging stages much more frequently than I do, but don’t sign me up for ANY first, last or anywhere if between me and the ground is a glass bottom. I’d like to think I’m going home that night, and I’m insecure as all get out riding a regular stage, and now it has a glass bottom on it? Nope, not this boy.

Glass bottom cars?  Ok, that might be cool. As long as the seat’s got other means of STEEL support, and won’t drop through the floor if the glass breaks. But keeping your eye on the road, not on the blazing rush of asphalt or concrete going by doesn’t make this feasible.

So for all you daredevils out there, who they keep building glass-bottom stuff for, so be it. But maybe not me. Some things, like Rocky Mountain Oysters, just don’t make any sense. Who’d want to do that?

After the BP oil spill and Toyota recall problems (I’ll bet Toyota’s glad something else replaced them on the front page), you’d think it would be in everybody’s best interest if companies were more forthcoming not only with what the problem might be, but what the solution is.

A recent example in our industry is the reports that have come out on problems with some batches of silicone sealants. There was an announcement of a manufacturing problem, but beyond that, little information on how extensive the issue is (or not) and how it should be solved.

Questions I have – that I don’t recall seeing answers to – on the sealants are:

1. Does the air entrainment in the secondary seal compromise the expected service life of a glass lite? Having it last the 10-year warranty is not what I’m talking about. Most glass ought to be good for 25-30 years, if not longer:  does this issue compromise that?
2. It makes sense that if the lite is put in a four-sided captured glazing system, nothing bad is expected to happen – the pressure plates or gaskets always putting pressure on the sandwich will help hold it together.  But that doesn’t have anything to do with item 1 above, or does it?
3. What about a structural silicone glazing system, be it four-sided (no captured edges) or two-sided? What’s the long-term viability of such units? Should they be replaced?
4. How many glass lites were made with problematic sealants, and how many of them may need to be replaced?
5. Are there other things we’re not aware of yet, but that could be a problem down the road?

My dad worked for the makers of Tylenol when someone put cyanide in some of the tablets in the early ’80s.  Johnson & Johnson, their parent company, jumped in with both feet to notify the public. They initially didn’t know if the products were tampered with or, if it was, heaven forbid, something in the manufacturing process. But they immediately pulled all the products off the shelf and bought new bottling equipment that put the film over the bottle or the plastic wrap over the cap. (Yes, you have that scare to thank for that “advance” in the human endeavor.)

But the point is, how Johnson & Johnson dealt with that whole fiasco is now taught at business schools.  Namely, to be proactive and transparent:  Even if you don’t know the cause, tell your customers what you’re doing in the meantime, and be completely up-front and open about it.  People will respect that.  When it’s found that it wasn’t your fault, your customers will keep using your product, even paying the premium for the safety or other added features you’ve incorporated. Tylenol’s sales ticked up after the tampering cause was discovered, and J&J loudly advertised what they were doing to protect the public from that happening again.

Just as important, and often overlooked, J&J was telling their people that they had confidence in them that they hadn’t screwed up making Tylenol.  They stood behind their people from the very beginning.  Tylenol would have gone away and never been heard from again if it had been the manufacturing and not tampering.  Doing the right thing for the right reason is always the best way to go.

Let’s have a contest:  Submit pictures like those of the Apple store, with your largest lite of glass, project name, glazing sub installing them, the glass supplier and hopefully with pictures with people in them to give them some scale. We’ll categorize them:

1. Insulated glass (with composition, double- or triple-glazed, with or without laminated lites)
2. Laminated glass: some of these monsters can be huge in more ways. I know of a job, built to be blast-resistant, that had two layers 3/8” thick sandwiched around a ½” thick lite, I think, and it was a private (not government  or military) project.  Let’s categorize this one:
   By size
   By weight
3. Monolithic:  No lami, but tempered, heat-strengthened or annealed. This one we can judge by thickness and size:
   3/8”,
   ½”,
   ¾”, or
   Thicker

Nothing official, but wouldn’t it be fun to see some of the gargantuan jobs being done out there?

For those of you at BEC a couple of years ago when Mike Eruzione was the keynote speaker, one of the points he raised was the U.S. Hockey Team’s victory at the 1980 Olympics wasn’t just luck. And if you saw the Kurt Russell movie about it, you’ll remember (and Mike alluded to it) that Herb Brooks knew who his players were before the tryouts, worked their butts off to make them a team, and reminded them that they’d remember the 3^rd period “for the rest of your #*@! lives.”

The World Cup only reinforces that concept. It’s absolutely amazing to see different teams’ approach to the game. How well Spain managed to control possession against a pretty good German team. How good these guys are at this level, from the final eight teams on to the final two.

And, believe it or not, this all has relevance to our industry. If you’ll recall Eruzione’s drawing the parallel, how well any business does first depends on having someone who can successfully put a team together, help make them successful by working them in practice (only practice in the business world ain’t practice, it’s working real-world, real-time projects), stretching them to achieve great things (the sum always being greater than the whole) and then enjoying the success. Another big difference: the business team has to keep doing it year-in, year out. Their team doesn’t stop being a team just because the Olympics are over.

On the other side, what happened to the French and Italian teams or their business equivalents? Talk about a coaching challenge! There are people out there who can coach up a team. Michael Jordan never won a title until Phil Jackson got to Chicago. Talent helps. Vision to put it all together and make it work is simply remarkable. Bill Davidson at Guardian was probably like that. Some of the original Apogee guys, Jerry Andersen, Gary Haider, Larry Neiderhoffer. When it doesn’t work, it doesn’t often get to be the implosion the French World Cup team appears to have gone through.

It’s interesting to note the “best companies to work for” results that magazines often run. Funny, never see any “best companies NOT to work for” but in all likelihood we all have our list of where we wouldn’t work.

Find the winners, ride the wave and be a team player. If you can just fill in a small piece of the puzzle, being a part of the whole is definitely worth it. It does take work, it isn’t easy, but it is worth it. And you will “remember it for the rest of your !@#$E% life.”

PS:  Way to go, Spain! Don’t have any suppliers from the Netherlands, at least that I know of anyway…

Decisions made due to financial and schedule pressures are all too real in this business as they are in any other. While such factors are probably huge in scale in other industries, in the curtain wall or glazing industries they haven’t led to the type of disasters where public safety or well-being have been jeopardized. And may God grant us the blessing they never will.

A quote from the editorial brought home to me the curtain wall tie-in: “The U.S. hasn’t reconciled the idea that engineers can render miracles – cloud-piercing towers, low-cost instantaneous digital communications, deep-sea drilling – with the idea that each fresh miracle hurls us into unfamiliar territory.” “…the Gulf of Mexico … will be remembered as the place where engineering prestige dipped to a new low in an age known for disasters as much as for progress.”

We’re a little bit lucky in this business. When involved with a professional engineer, it’s usually on the structural side of the business, and a lot of peace of mind can follow. Shop drawing preparation ought to be done hand in hand with a structural engineer as every bit the player as the fab and field people. Calculations verifying the size of the frame members, the suitability of the anchor design, and the overall adequacy of the construction are all critical. It’s a pretty safe bet that the wall when installed that way will stay on the building and perform as intended, at least from a structural standpoint.

Fortunately, building codes, project specifications, and more importantly, industry standards, make sure that compliant walls can eliminate most of the bad things from ever happening. New technologies keep appearing, too. Warm-edge spacers, blast- and hurricane-resistant walls, cable walls, glass mullions, etc., all require some degree of engineering to assure they work as intended. One of the fun things about going to the testing laboratories is to see the inventiveness of other systems, especially some of the anchor configurations that are developed, not to mention the wall systems themselves.

As static as the wall may appear, there are still a lot of dynamic forces in play:

• Wind loads are always with us, sometimes just a slight breeze, but at other times in the form of tornadoes, straight-line wind bursts or hurricanes.
• Thermal loading also causes framing to expand and contract over seasonal or daily temperature swings.
• Building frame movement, either from the wind loads the curtain wall passes into the frame or from seismic activity, or from frame shrinkage or occupant loads deflecting a slab edge beam.

All of these things have to be accounted for in frame-member-to-frame-member connections, as well as creating expansion and fixed anchoring conditions tying the wall back to the building.

While most companies have “engineering” departments, often these are not fully staffed with licensed engineers. That’s not a deficiency, because more often than not, the systems designed and drawn by these staffs are reviewed and checked by a licensed P.E., thus the “life and safety of the general public” is addressed. And thankfully, in more times than not, that system, including the “checks and balances” of submitting calculations for review by the project engineer, hasn’t failed us.

One of the backstops to assure “the system” works before it ever gets put up on a building is testing, be it manufacturer or independent third-party testing. Mockup testing is an awfully expensive proposition, but it’s always been my belief that no one has yet built a mockup where nothing was learned. Yes, there may have been mockups or tests that passed the first time through. In those instances, the lesson learned was, “We did it right.”

Please don’t be the one to suggest a mockup or testing shouldn’t be done. One of the lessons learned is that sometimes it’s not done right, requiring revisions to materials or assembly methodologies. At times, the field will get an idea of things they can do to maximize their efficiency, which can lead to lower field installation costs. For owners and architects, once the wall passes the testing, they learn their wall contractor knows how to put up and install the wall, and they’ll get what they paid for.

It’s a costly proposition, and usually jumps out to an owner looking to cut costs, but it is a way of assuring everyone involved that it can be done correctly. And in the end, it can save the cost of a mockup if/when a flaw is found.

The single biggest factor in making sure all this works: the people that make up this industry want to get it right. All of us look to cut costs, improve efficiencies, and find better, cheaper and faster ways of doing things. But I have yet to hear any stories or witness first-hand someone talking about a decision dealing with structural integrity that would cut that corner to save even a single dollar. If they exist, I hope they’re tarred and feathered on their way out of Dodge.

But for the “getting it right” part: may God grant that blessing will always be a part of this business, too.

Saw this link on the Dan Patrick Show, about a former NBA official caught betting on games. This one hit a little too close to home.  As a high school basketball official many years ago, it’s one thing to blow a call – and that happens – but to do so on purpose?  To win a bet?  When asked why people officiate any sport, it’s a way of staying involved in the game, a way to give back.  In a way, you do it for the kids who play the game.  Even it up, make a game of it, all of the other clichés …  But to throw a game as a ref? 

I watched Pete Rose as a player, and he shouldn’t be put in the Hall. You can’t ruin the credibility of the game that gave you your fame, and expect its most hallowed halls to honor you. 

A former boss of mine, when asked by a GC he hadn’t dealt with (and didn’t have a long-term relationship with yet) about how honest he was with how change orders were priced, responded: “I’m reasonably honest, but no more so than you are.”  What a great answer!  We are, after all, just humans. Hopefully, “Honesty is the Best Policy” hasn’t really died.  

School graduation season will be here shortly. This one has special meaning to us: our youngest graduates high school. All eight (yes, eight, and it was enough, too) of them have received public school educations. That will be her mother and I singing Handel’s “Hallelujah Chorus” at graduation. So far, there are five college degrees, two in the process of getting theirs, two graduate degrees being worked on and this last one better get one, too. The degrees come due to their hard work, and their teachers got them started on this road. Their parents may have helped, granted, but it was not accomplished alone.  Not by a long shot.  

My hat’s off to the teachers who did the most work. Why is it you can remember who your really good and bad teachers were, but the middle-of-the-roaders just fade from memory? Thank a teacher today, ask them to keep at it and make their students work! Someone has to earn my Social Security check money in years now too soon in coming. (My fallback if SS goes down is to move in with the kiddos.) 

I, for one, will GLADLY pay my school property taxes from here on out. We may be done with public education in our family, but will keep paying our school taxes as payback for the one-heck-of-a-deal we got at our house on educating my kids. 

I know I got more than the 3 R’s in school. When we start cutting the debate teams, the bands, choirs and arts, that’s when we’ll know the apocalypse is near. Heaven only knows we’re NOT going to cut sports, which is ok, as long as we keep all the other extra-curricular programs, too.  Bottom line:  fight for the school budgets to keep all the programs. It’ll help us produce a better next generation. We owe it to them, and to the past generations that did it for us. 

Go Flyers!  I won a bet last week with a co-worker:  I had the Flyers, he had Boston. Poor Boston:  down 3-0 to the Yanks in ’04, they win the World Series. There’s talk already of the BoSox folding up this year, the AL East being too strong. The Bruins, up 3-0 on the Flyers, and then 10 minutes into Game 7, on their home ice, up 3-0, they let the Flyers score 4 straight. The Flyers haven’t been scored on since being down 3-0 to the Bruins. Sorry Les Canadiens:  it ain’t your year (After I’d written this, the Flyers just lost game 3.  Here’s hoping it’s not 2-2 or worse by the time you read this). Maybe the Celtics, up 2-0 to the Magic, will finish Orlando off. And the Phillies are in 1^st Place. The Eagles traded Donovan – to DC of all places. Thank goodness it wasn’t to Dallas. But Washington? All’s not right, but I can’t remember being a Philly fan and having it so good.

Within this discussion, it’s imperative to check and understand the code and local requirements that come into play. The insulation may be required for thermal performance, but skipping the safing is more of a life-safety issue. If the local code officials don’t know, the fire department inspection people may have some good ideas. And look up members of the Firestop Contractors International Association (FCIA), who live with these issues on a regular basis. 

Safing and smoke seal is meant to prevent smoke and fire from going around the floor slab to floors not yet involved in fire. Generally 4” thick, it must be placed into the opening in the same orientation throughout the installation. Different manufacturers will vary with this, but most will require a ½” (nominal) more than the opening dimension to assure a friction fit into the back of the wall-to-slab edge gap.

Support of the safing insulation by some means is needed so it doesn’t fall through. Impaling pins placed a maximum 24” OC in the safing is a must. If the nominal gap is larger than 4”, formed pans of 20-gauge galvanized steel anchored to the slab edge should be required to keep the insulation falling through on wide gaps. 

Lastly, applying a smoke seal to the top of the safing is now required by code in many jurisdictions. It is applied at least 1” up on the back of the insulation, and 1” onto the floor. 

Underwriters Laboratories and other testing agencies have begun rating and testing whole wall assemblies, including curtain walls, insulation and safing installations. Included in the testing are the miscellaneous taping, supporting clips, and retention devices referenced above. It is truly a “whole assembly” test scenario. Most of the manufacturers have their typical curtain wall insulation/safing installations in the databases; their reps can help you find these should the need arise. 

This link will give you the UL rating page, and you can type in either the insulation or wall system manufacturer, then look for a UL 263 rated wall system.  Type in “curtain wall” in keyword, and it helps to type in all the info you have:  insulation product name or manufacturer. Then browse through the search results to find insulation details similar to what you might propose for a given project. UL can either test a new configuration, or perform an “engineering judgment” to determine if a proposed design is similar in major aspects to an already tested construction, which may alleviate the need for additional or new testing. 

The insulation manufacturers and FCIA are also looking at ways to contain fire from “leap frogging” floors around the curtain wall and floor systems. In an unprotected curtain wall, a fire that starts on one floor can break through the exterior wall in vision glass areas, and the flames could damage the glass on the next floor up, thereby “leap frogging” around the floor perimeter and giving the fire an opportunity to spread to the next floors above. 

As with most products, the insulation manufacturers are a great resource. It’s one more part of the trade to master, and to have a passing knowledge about. Because if it’s not part of your scope, you’ll have to coordinate it with the trades that will furnish and install it.

A recent presentation to another trade organization brought home that there are other people out there with just as many smarts in their respective trades as we have in the glazing industry. What knowledge they have in relation to what they do day-in, day-day out, simply amazes. It’s one of the things that makes the construction biz so much fun, and getting to see it all come together in real projects is what continues to float this boat.   

The group was the Firestop Contractors International Association (FCIA), whose members usually deal with sealing penetrations through either floors or walls to help contain fire. On occasion, they also deal with the curtain wall insulation and particularly the fire safing at the perimeter edge. And while it’s one of the bodies of knowledge we deal with least, some concepts keep coming back again and again. So, some basic insulation and fireproofing concepts seemed proper for this and the next blog.

• Insulation or safing should NEVER be installed if it’s wet, nor should it be installed (or stored for that matter) where it can get wet. Installation should only occur when the building is mostly dried in, or in areas where insulation is installed that can be protected from the elements. If it’s installed wet, it will eventually need to be replaced, and it’s possible the interior finishes may be in the way when it’s discovered it was wet. Voice of experience:  Insulation was installed wet in the fall in a cold climate and then froze over the winter. When the weather turned warm in the spring, the “leak” was reported and found to be wet insulation.   
• Coordination with adjacent trades is a must. The insulation and safing have to be installed prior to the interior trades, so getting with the general contractor and working this out is a must. 
• How the HVAC consultant or engineer wants the wall to perform thermally will likely set the insulation’s thickness. More is better as it relates to R-values (but that’s already something you knew, right?). Now, if we can just get the NFRC folks to include this in their CMA (he said, editorializing a bit).   
• The wall insulation should be cut to fit the nominal DLO, usually between frame members. Most insulation installations should be foil faced. Not because it performs better thermally, but so that humidity in the treated air doesn’t reach colder glass or metal framing surfaces, which could result in condensation. Because HVAC equipment is now putting more humidity in the air to cut down on energy requirements/size of the mechanical systems, humidity levels are rising as compared to just a few years ago. 
• Wrapping the mullion in insulation in the spandrel area probably is a good idea from a condensation standpoint. Whether it serves the purpose of insulating the mullion isn’t as clear-cut, since the mullion spanning into the vision area probably short-circuits the thermal benefits. But keeping the mullion protected from possible sources of condensation in the spandrel helps reduce thermal transfer as well.  
• And because it’s foil faced, the perimeter and any joints of the insulation need to be foil-taped to the perimeter. Joints and perimeters not taped negate any benefit from the foil facing in the first place. Single piece insulation for the openings is preferred (joints are ok, but carry their own problems). Mechanical retention is required; the insulation must stay where it’s designed to be placed.
• If the horizontal member nearest the safing is more than 8” distant, then a backer bar needs to be added to the insulation inside the curtain wall to support the insulation and prevent it from bowing and widening the gap between insulation and slab edge when safing is installed. 

Glass and metal frames require insulation to help with thermal performance. But it has to be installed correctly to perform as intended. In the next blog post, I’ll address issues with installing safing. In the meantime, I have a few credit card applications to throw out … or should I just mark them “Return to Sender” and send the Post Office further into the red?

In 2002, I got to actually participate in building one: the Clinton Presidential Library in Little Rock. I was working for CDC in Dallas, who, under contract to BHN, the glazing subcontractor, prepared the shop drawings and fabrication drawings for eight of the nine curtain walls employed on the project.

The library itself is certainly different. One architectural critic called it a “mobile home on stilts.” Adjacent to downtown Little Rock, and located next to a train station turned into a university center and an abandoned railroad bridge over the Arkansas River, the building’s architect played on the president’s theme of a “Bridge to the 21^st Century.” When it was completed, it was one of the better laid out, functional, thoughtful and more pleasant presidential libraries I’ve been through.

But the particulars of the project made for some interesting issues as it relates to the curtain wall. As a museum first, the HVAC systems had to be designed to preserve the artifacts in the museum. That meant fairly high relative humidity (40-50%).

And direct sunlight through the predominately glass west façade had to be mitigated so as not to cause the mementos on display to fade or deteriorate from the sun’s UV rays. An exterior screen wall of point-supported glass mounted on steel framing 10’-0” off the main curtain wall significantly reduced the sun from entering the main public spaces.

Most of the curtain walls were small – under 3,000 square feet in some instances. Only one was larger than 10,000 square feet.

My present employer would have gotten a kick out of this: eight of the nine walls we worked on were structural steel tubes clad with aluminum extrusions or stainless steel brake metal. Several of the walls were hung from the structure without mullions. Horizontal structural steel tubes, spaced 3’-0” vertically, ran between columns. The horizontals were tied to the columns for wind load support, but the dead load was carried by stainless steel rods positioned every 10’-0” on center to the structure above. The challenge was mounting and waterproofing the glazing pocket on the front of the steel to carry the 1 5/16-inch-thick insulating/laminated glass units.

Most of the challenges came not from the curtain walls themselves, but from the integration of the curtain walls with other systems. For example:

• Putting doors in a hung curtain wall can be a little tricky. If the structure supporting the curtain wall moves, it moves towards the door. And the door is supported off a different level than the curtain wall, thus making the door and wall usually moving (due to thermal or building movements) in the opposite directions.
• Waterproofing the surrounding conditions and successfully transferring the air and water barrier line from the curtain wall to the surrounding substrates, often the sheathing behind a composite panel system. Again, due to HVAC and water issues, the sheathing was clad with a vapor permeable barrier, to which many sealants would not stick. We ended up specifying a flashing that the perimeter curtain wall sealed to, and then the panel subcontractor had to seal the flashing to the sheathing. But the rest of the sheathing and vapor permeable barrier was open for the transfer of humidity.
• Coordination of the steel supporting the curtain wall between two different suppliers was hectic at times. Putting these all in one house would have simplified this matter a lot.

It was a fun project, and I got to sit through the dedication on a cold, wet November day in 2004, and saw four U.S. presidents in attendance. Some projects will outlive us. But the memory of a good team and a money-maker for all concerned is the history lesson here.

Some things of note from the conference:　 

• Reglaze / Retrofit / Remodel might be the basic three Rs for the industry for a while.　If new construction suffers as it has, then owners may upgrade what they have.　　That creates a whole different niche some will want to get into.
• The presentation on PREVENTABLE Curtain Wall Failures. If you can access the GANA website, the presentation did an excellent job of covering those.　It’s getting passed to the Engineering Department for their use when I get back to the office.　
• Get your teams situated per the strategic direction of your company. That may mean trimming, but it may also mean training up with new skill sets for your present employees. And, raising the expectations of what they can do.
• Energy issues are driving new products to the market, but are also the basis for most of the code issues currently being considered.　I don’t think there was a single product discussed that wasn’t making reference to increased energy performance.　Eventually, as all of these get integrated into single projects, it’s all gotta add up, right?　
• I heard a comment about Russ Huffer’s presentation regarding Net Zero Buildings (look it up in GANA’s website, hopefully it will be there).　His presentation was a good case for not balancing the whole of a building’s energy consumption on just the amount of glazing in it.　The comment: “We need to get him in front of ASHRAE.　SOON!”　
• Code issues:　 do these ever go away?　Probably not.　We haven’t seen the full impact of NFRC, but ASHRAE 90.1 is on the horizon now, too.　It’s becoming apparent the typical glazing subs don’t have the resources to take on the code issues by themselves, and may not know where to start.　Fortunately, some of the large manufacturers, both from the framing and glass houses, as well as GANA and other trade associations, are stepping in to help fend off some of these attacks.　I’m grateful for their willingness to do so.　And while I may not know exactly how to fight these issues, I hope we as an industry can lend a hand if they see fit to call on us directly to support their efforts.　At least let them know you can and will do that should the need arise.　　　　
  And if you don’t think they’re attacks, then take another look.　Reducing the percentage of glass on projects by code is an attack in this one man’s view.　
• Building Enclosure Councils, supported by the AIA, have sprouted up in some of the major metropolitan areas.　These are great places to make contact with the architects in your area.　I’m sure they’d welcome technical presentations or AIA-type credit lectures, etc.　

• BIM standards for the glass and glazing industry are now being integrated with what the general contractors and architects are already doing.　Some of the larger glazing subs are in the process of implementing some of what BIM’s potential can/may bring to the table.　 　
• Fenestration Manual is a pretty broad concept, and it may take several more years to generate and coalesce everyone’s efforts before this one makes it to print.　But there’s got to be some reference manual for beginners, which there isn’t right now.

• Tintable glass that changes as the sun changes. Be it a bright sunny day or cloudy, it adjusts without the use of secondary power.
• Flexible flashings from window to surrounding conditions.　
• Silicone and foam glass spacers that have the desiccant built right in.　

And last, but not least: learning French expressions over the Muzak sound system while conducting business in the men’s room. Of all places … but only in Vegas, right?