In February, I had the great pleasure of visiting New Zealand (NZ) to help my Antipodean colleagues do some local market education on the importance of improving the thermal performance of the edge of fenestration (frame and edge of glass).
New Zealand is a very beautiful country with wonderful people, and I felt right at home: Tea comes hot and with milk there, and I had to re-train myself to say “Aluminium,” not “Aluminum.” I also spent a great day wine tasting on the picturesque island of Waiheke, understanding and appreciating the differences between NZ- and U.S.-made wines.
I also had the opportunity to meet and talk with several of the insulating glass (IG) manufacturers and fenestration systems suppliers including APL Window Solutions, Altus, Viridian, Thermosash, Metro Performance Glass and Glass Relate. As I learned, just like with wine, the dynamics of the NZ fenestration market are quite different to our market in North America, and to that of Europe. That said, there is some interesting benchmarking we can do between the markets.
One interesting difference is that glass for residential applications are made in “whole house” batches. With several different glass sizes, types and IG thicknesses in each house glass package of say, 25 units, there are many changeovers within each order that make automation efficiencies difficult to achieve. This drives the New Zealand IG manufacturers to be operationally excellent at delivering “mass customization” of IG units with short lead times, which helps defend against competition from Asian importers.
New Zealand is relatively young in its use of IG, with an installed base that is only about ten years old. They have evaluated what’s working in other regional markets as they have developed their codes and standards. They are adopting some of the best practices from Europe and North America, and tailoring them to their market to create robust IG unit quality.
New Zealand has chosen to adopt the European IG seal test standards EN 1279 part 2 (moisture ingress) and part 3 (gas retention) to assess durability performance of IG units. These standards are similar to North America’s ASTM suite of IG standards, but have some important differences. For example, the EN1279-2 weathering test does not include exposing the IG seal to ultraviolet light, whereas its equivalent in North America, ASTM E2188, does. The European standard does, however, include a quantitative assessment of the amount of water ingress into the unit during weathering, so manufacturers and the market can assess the margin by which their IG units pass the test. The ASTM E2188/E2190 standards provide only a pass/fail by assessing if the cavity dew point is lower than -40oF or not. There is no indication of how close to “failure” a unit has come as a result of weathering. For example, the desiccant in a passing unit could be very close to fully saturated or it could have a lot of capacity left, but the ASTM IG test standards do not provide insights to this.
In Europe, fabricators need only to demonstrate they have passed EN1279 parts 2 and 3, once, for a given IG unit construction and test units do not have to be made on a production line. While they are required to have a process control plan in place to ensure the consistent manufacturing of that unit construction, they are not required to re-test with a third-party to demonstrate performance thereafter. In contrast, in North America, third-party IG certification is becoming a market norm because it is required to receive an NFRC performance label and is also written in the majority of architectural specifications. To have certified IG units, North American manufacturers need to show compliance with ASTM E2190 annually or biennially, which is important to ensure transparent and consistent quality on the market. The most stringent North American certification programs include the Insulating Glass Certification Council/Insulating Glass Manufacturers Alliance (IGCC/IGMA) and Insulating Glass Manufacturers Association of Canada (IGMAC) programs. These program require IG units to be built on the manufacturing line in the presence of an auditor and regular, twice-yearly audits of the manufacturer’s quality system.
To the credit of NZ’s fenestration associations, the Window & Glass Association – New Zealand (WGANZ) and its Insulating Glass Unit Manufacturers Association (IGUMA) subgroup, they also have recognized the need for maintaining consistent performance over time, and IGUMA members are now required to demonstrate that they can meet the requirements of EN1279 with units made on their production lines annually. While this requirement introduces additional cost to manufacturers and will likely streamline the number of different IG configurations offered by each manufacturer, it also should help ensure consistent quality of IG units being installed in New Zealand’s homes and buildings.