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The Insulating Glass Manufacturers Alliance (IGMA) Technical Services Committee helped close out three days of meetings this week at the IGMA summer conference in Banff, Alberta.
Wednesday morning, the Load Resistance for Unsupported IGUs joint task group, which is joined with the Glass Association of North America (GANA), convened. Chairperson Tracy Rogers of Quanex said the group had one conference call earlier this year to collect documentation, and it is seeking additional guidance and/or design work from architects and specifiers for reference.
“We have a draft, but we have to fill in some blanks,” Rogers said.
Jeff Haberer of Trulite suggested the name of the group be shortened to “IG Units with Unsupported Edges.” The group will bring that proposal to GANA.
Rogers also chairs the Visual Quality task group, which is a joint effort with the American Architectural Manufacturers Association (AAMA) that will set up a consumer-oriented webpage to help people understand the characteristics of glass and what actually constitutes a defect.
“The primary focus is to help consumers understand standards,” Rogers said. “The beginning is an introduction to glass and glazing systems, so they get a baseline knowledge for what they’re looking at. Then we’ll get into respective standards for different kinds of glass.”
Rob Grommesh of Cardinal gave an update on the Guidelines and Tolerances for IG Cavity Width task group, which is creating a document regarding center gap reduction and had a conference call in June. He said most of the comments the group received were about whether U-factor charts should be included in the document.
The group mocked up two drafts—one with the charts removed completely, and another with them relocated to the appendix.
“We agreed to not have it in the body of the document, but now the question is whether it is in the appendix or not included at all,” said Margaret Webb, executive director of IGMA. “If it’s in the appendix, it’s not mandatory, but just in there for information purposes.”
The Edge Pressure of IGUs group also convened. The group, chaired by Helen Sanders of SageGlass, is looking to conduct lab studies on excessive edge pressure in these units and the issues surrounding it. Sanders said Kawneer’s Greg McKenna, on behalf of AAMA, has designed a piece of equipment that could be built for this testing.
“The first part of what we’re doing is trying to understand what conditions cause too much edge pressure,” said Sanders. “The other part, once we know what the range and conditions are that cause inappropriate movements of PIB, is how we can actually measure it in a system.”
That led into Guardian’s Dave Cooper giving an update on the PIB Migration task group, a joint group with GANA.
The group’s original scope was a three-part document—a definition of the problem, mitigation strategies and PIB compatibility testing.
Cooper said the GANA side of the task group felt the scope was too broad and voted last year to reduce it to compatibility testing, and sealant manufacturers involved agreed on a published testing method from ift Rosenheim.
The document was sent out for comment, and Cooper said the group received feedback questioning “why we are not defining the problem or addressing mitigation strategies.”
“It is imperative that this group get back together and get their objectives straight,” he said. “We’ve put a lot of work into this, and a lot of people on the task group are upset that we haven’t published yet.”
The IGMA conference concluded Wednesday afternoon.
