Are We in For a Big Glass Curtain Wall Problem?

[whatnext]

This was on Garth Turner's blog (notable real estate bear) but he's very critical of the trend for condo buildings with glass curtain walls. Anyone else think this is a ticking timebomb?

http://www.greaterfool.ca/2014/08/14...operty-ladder/

[Alex Mackinnon]

As far as durability goes, I'd imagine things are much better in Vancouver since the thermal cycles are so much smaller. You don't see nearly as large of a temperature variation here as you would in Toronto, and that in turn should mean that the seals and glass last longer. It also means the efficiency loss doesn't matter as much since there's less heating and cooling.

[WarrenC12]

Ahhh Garth Turner. I remember in 2000 when he was saying the Dow was going to 30,000 and real estate was going to crash.

Even a broken clock is right twice a day, maybe in Garth's case it's twice a century, but we haven't seen the first one yet.

[spm2013]

I think he's a ticking time bomb. Moron.

[officedweller]

Eventually, says Kesik, all these glass condo buildings will have to be reskinned, which not only costs w-a-y more than the recaulking and sealing process, but requires they have to be evacuated. Even if done on a floor-by-floor basis, condo owners will have to move themselves and their stuff out for at least a month.

http://www.greaterfool.ca/2014/08/14...operty-ladder/

Yeah, like Klazu had to move out of his place when the curtain wall was replaced - NOT.

Also, my understanding is that most of the falling galss in Toronto is balcony glass, not window wall or curtain wall glass.

[spm2013]

Originally Posted by officedweller

http://www.greaterfool.ca/2014/08/14...operty-ladder/

Yeah, like Klazu had to move out of his place when the curtain wall was replaced - NOT.

Also, my understanding is that most of the falling galss in Toronto is balcony glass, not window wall or curtain wall glass.

In their idiot world glass is glass so don't let facts like that get in the way

Not a glass curtain wall



http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2013..._to_trial.html

[djh]

OK, I get it that Garth Turner speaks in hyperbole.

But sometimes it's necessary to raise attention to an issue.


I do wonder, without all of the "sky is falling!" paranoia, how much of a danger a downtown full of glass towers will be in the future. We do have some poorly-built towers. We do have some towers which need or have needed to be re-skinned. I'm sure there's a certain percentage for which this will become a neccessity in the near future.

I can only imagine the insurance claims if a medium-sized earthquake or other major disaster hits Vancouver and there's falling glass everywhere. I would not be surprised if that in the aftermath, insurance companies hike the rates for any towers with all-glass cladding because of the "risk".

[a very long weekend]

it's an interesting concern. i could easily envision the soulless glass towers of the past 1.5 decades going the way of the soulless concrete towers of the 1960s and 1970s, for many of the same reasons: slipshod construction, evisceration of street life and broad trends away from certain forms and aesthetics. like, walking around yorkville up in toronto, i truly can't believe how incredibly shabby it is relative to housing costs, the same goes for so many hoods (the soulless concord adex areas are somehow worse than saint james town, its 70s corollary). i could totally envision the sort of turn against such "neighborhoods" to the extent that just protecting owners' investments would require expensive cladding and facade rehabilitation. in some cases, it's the first thing i think of when i look at a building.

also, to those ridiculing the article, his main source does seem very legit: http://www.daniels.utoronto.ca/people/kesikted like, guy is a professor, a phd and industry expert specializing in (among other things) high performance buildings, durability, life cycle assessment.

[spm2013]

So what some idiot PhD probably designed those curtain walls. And he's not even a real professor just an "associate"

[Klazu]

I think Toronto will have a problem here. It's the new de facto city of glass.

[Kisai]

Originally Posted by Alex Mackinnon

As far as durability goes, I'd imagine things are much better in Vancouver since the thermal cycles are so much smaller. You don't see nearly as large of a temperature variation here as you would in Toronto, and that in turn should mean that the seals and glass last longer. It also means the efficiency loss doesn't matter as much since there's less heating and cooling.

Vancouver has two serious problems:
a) Condos/Apartments that lack both in-unit HVAC and central HVAC. (It seems nobody has AC.) Had they been built with AC, none of the leaky Condo business would have ever needed to happen. A/C controls moisture. Running a fan also controls moisture (but owners turn them off because of noise.)
b) Glass allows more heat to enter and escape, but not moisture. Vancouver is wet. Mold likes cold wet places.

You need the in-unit system to control the unit's climate, but you need a central HVAC in the building to make sure that no unit or common area goes out of stable parameters, otherwise it's bad for everyone.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leaky_condo_crisis

So what was happening instead out here was that the seals were too good when the buildings are built, so the moisture seeps in and rots everything. Now the buildings are built with better code.

But they are still being built cheaply using glass. Baseboard Electric Heating, no Air conditioning, and no building central HVAC = problem waiting to happen. I don' t know if the building I lived for a while was ever remediated or not, but I think the glass problem is just Leaky Condo 2.0, but we won't see it until the seals shrink enough, probably 40-50 years down the line.

[GMasterAres]

Originally Posted by Kisai

Vancouver has two serious problems:
a) Condos/Apartments that lack both in-unit HVAC and central HVAC. (It seems nobody has AC.) Had they been built with AC, none of the leaky Condo business would have ever needed to happen. A/C controls moisture. Running a fan also controls moisture (but owners turn them off because of noise.)

Not really the fault of the developers. In Vancouver, AC is a bit overkill. Firstly it sucks a lot of energy, secondly, we aren't really super hot for much of the year, and thirdly, there tends to always be wind especially high up in towers so opening a window or door can vent a place pretty quickly.

Also the buildings I've been in recently have all had central HVAC with pressurized inner cores so if you want to vent your place you just open your balcony door, open the door to the hallway, and your place is vented in about 5-10 minutes flat if that.

As for running a fan, they are all on automatic timers and you're warned insanely by the builder, strata, and stickers everywhere stating you must allow the fans to run. Even in the place I just moved into, our main bathroom fan must run twice per day 3 hours each time to keep condensation down and to maintain my home warranty and insurance.

So if people turn them off because they are "noisy" you certainly can't fault the developer for that. AC wouldn't make a difference it isn't silent either.

b) Glass allows more heat to enter and escape, but not moisture. Vancouver is wet. Mold likes cold wet places.

Very true. The issue though is the coating on the glass. You can get film installed on glass windows that double or triple their efficiency both for heat blocking and heat retaining. Also triple pane windows can help but they are expensive and I know no new towers that use them.

You need the in-unit system to control the unit's climate, but you need a central HVAC in the building to make sure that no unit or common area goes out of stable parameters, otherwise it's bad for everyone.

Are there any towers these days without central HVAC in the building? Unit HVAC ok that isn't typically done, but central HVAC seems to be put into every tower + the doors are built such that the pressure forces air through into the units (they aren't air tight).

So what was happening instead out here was that the seals were too good when the buildings are built, so the moisture seeps in and rots everything. Now the buildings are built with better code.

But they are still being built cheaply using glass. Baseboard Electric Heating, no Air conditioning, and no building central HVAC = problem waiting to happen. I don' t know if the building I lived for a while was ever remediated or not, but I think the glass problem is just Leaky Condo 2.0, but we won't see it until the seals shrink enough, probably 40-50 years down the line.

Again are there still buildings being built with no central building HVAC? I haven't been in a new one lacking this but I could be wrong. That i would agree is a major issue.

Leaky anything will always be a problem in Metro Vancouver where we average 70% humidity all year long. Codes are adjusting but honestly one thing forgotten in the leaky condo crisis is that it did bring about change. I think things should have been anticipated and there was certainly "know" that was ignored, but it did change things for the better I think and made people aware (or they should be at least) of these types of issues.

[a very long weekend]

Originally Posted by spm2013

So what some idiot PhD probably designed those curtain walls. And he's not even a real professor just an "associate"

uh, lol, you win stupidest comment of the week. you realize that associate is tenure track, right? at canada's best university no less (and i say that as a mcgill alumnus). i mean, it's off topic but like I'm pretty sure that the guy knows what he's talking about.

[spm2013]

The wisdom from the Associate Prof:

“I have always maintained that, when you’re looking at those glass towers there, you’re basically looking at the slums of the future,” insists Kesik.

“No one will want to buy them because people will look at them and say, ‘Are you crazy? I don’t want to buy something that leaks, that will cost a fortune to retrofit.’ So when they can’t get sold, they’ll get rented. And they’re not of a high quality, so they can’t get rented for a lot of money. So who do you think is going to live there? I tell people, this is where your grandchildren are going to come to buy crack.

“No one wants to talk about these things because it gets people scared,” he warns. “The guys in the condos don’t want to talk about it because they’re sitting there saying, ‘You can’t talk like that, you’re going to devalue my condo and, if you devalue my condo, I am going to sue you for having devalued my real estate investment.’

“This is how bad it has gotten. It’s that cruel a joke.”

http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2013...t_to_last.html

[Calgarian]

People have been cladding buildings in glass for over 50 years now, so if this was a problem, then it would be well documented by now. The issue is when developers or contractors try to cut corners and don't install the systems properly, things like the leaky condo crisis happen.

[spm2013]

Originally Posted by Calgarian

People have been cladding buildings in glass for over 50 years now, so if this was a problem, then it would be well documented by now. The issue is when developers or contractors try to cut corners and don't install the systems properly, things like the leaky condo crisis happen.

Well they preface all their statements between "glass walls" and "glass curtain walls"

[officedweller]

Originally Posted by jhausner

As for running a fan, they are all on automatic timers and you're warned insanely by the builder, strata, and stickers everywhere stating you must allow the fans to run. Even in the place I just moved into, our main bathroom fan must run twice per day 3 hours each time to keep condensation down and to maintain my home warranty and insurance.

Interesting.
My circa 1993 condo has a humidity control (looks like a thermostat) that you set at a particular percentage, and it controls the bathroom fan in my guest bathroom (which is fairly central to the suite layout).

[WarrenC12]

I tell people, this is where your grandchildren are going to come to buy crack.

First of all, this article is from March 2013.

Shoddy construction and builders cutting corners has been around since the Roman Colosseum.

For our present day concerns, I think the new mandate for depreciation reports is a great step. We've come a long way since the the problems that led to the leaky condo crisis. People also need to remember that was a problem primarily with wood-frame construction.

[Klazu]

Actually, many Canadian cities may have an opportunity here...

Solar energy that doesn’t block the view

A team of researchers at Michigan State University has developed a new type of solar concentrator that when placed over a window creates solar energy while allowing people to actually see through the window.

It is called a transparent luminescent solar concentrator and can be used on buildings, cell phones and any other device that has a clear surface.

And, according to Richard Lunt of MSU’s College of Engineering, the key word is “transparent.”

Research in the production of energy from solar cells placed around luminescent plastic-like materials is not new. These past efforts, however, have yielded poor results – the energy production was inefficient and the materials were highly colored.

“No one wants to sit behind colored glass,” said Lunt, an assistant professor of chemical engineering and materials science. “It makes for a very colorful environment, like working in a disco. We take an approach where we actually make the luminescent active layer itself transparent.”

The solar harvesting system uses small organic molecules developed by Lunt and his team to absorb specific nonvisible wavelengths of sunlight.

“We can tune these materials to pick up just the ultraviolet and the near infrared wavelengths that then ‘glow’ at another wavelength in the infrared,” he said.

The “glowing” infrared light is guided to the edge of the plastic where it is converted to electricity by thin strips of photovoltaic solar cells.

“Because the materials do not absorb or emit light in the visible spectrum, they look exceptionally transparent to the human eye,” Lunt said.

One of the benefits of this new development is its flexibility. While the technology is at an early stage, it has the potential to be scaled to commercial or industrial applications with an affordable cost.

“It opens a lot of area to deploy solar energy in a non-intrusive way,” Lunt said. “It can be used on tall buildings with lots of windows or any kind of mobile device that demands high aesthetic quality like a phone or e-reader. Ultimately we want to make solar harvesting surfaces that you do not even know are there.”

Lunt said more work is needed in order to improve its energy-producing efficiency. Currently it is able to produce a solar conversion efficiency close to 1 percent, but noted they aim to reach efficiencies beyond 5 percent when fully optimized. The best colored LSC has an efficiency of around 7 percent.

The research was featured on the cover of a recent issue of the journal Advanced Optical Materials.

Other members of the research team include Yimu Zhao, an MSU doctoral student in chemical engineering and materials science; Benjamin Levine, assistant professor of chemistry; and Garrett Meek, doctoral student in chemistry.

[etceteraism]

Originally Posted by jhausner

Not really the fault of the developers. In Vancouver, AC is a bit overkill. Firstly it sucks a lot of energy, secondly, we aren't really super hot for much of the year, and thirdly, there tends to always be wind especially high up in towers so opening a window or door can vent a place pretty quickly.

Also the buildings I've been in recently have all had central HVAC with pressurized inner cores so if you want to vent your place you just open your balcony door, open the door to the hallway, and your place is vented in about 5-10 minutes flat if that.

I disagree with this. My unit is up high, and it is sweltering usually from May until October. It's normally a good 10-15 degrees hotter inside the unit than it is outside, and we run our portable AC unit all day during that period. Most homes or ground level townhouses/condos wouldn't have this problem, but once you are up high you get the full force of the sun. Our windows don't open wide and there is no balcony so ventilation is poor. As well, while our building does have central HVAC which provides AC to the hallways, strata rules don't allow us to prop our doors open to cool the place down (although most people do-I did this before I had a dog but there are too many issues with him escaping now). I think it's common for stratas to restrict this because they want to keep noise and cooking smells inside the units.