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IGMA: June 2014

The Insulating Glass Manufacturers Alliance’s 2014 Winter Conference was held the first week of March in San Francisco.

The Insulating Glass Manufacturers Alliance’s 2014 Winter Conference was held the first week of March in San Francisco. In addition to the technical meetings, highlights included the opening night at Alcatraz and a one-day meeting and tour at Lawrence Berkley National Laboratories in Berkeley, Calif.

Since the last meeting, IGMA has announced the publication of two new technical manuals: TM-1300-13 Design Considerations for Multiple Cavity Insulating Glass Units, and TM-1500-14 Guidelines to Reduce the Instances of Thermal Stress. Both of these documents are available for purchase through the new IGMA online store. IGMA is going virtual for publication orders and will only be providing electronic copies. In addition to the IGMA Online Publication Store, we launched an industry calendar that lists many of the events, meetings and trade shows the industry is interested in. If you have a public event you would like to have included in the calendar, please send the information to IGMA.

The Emerging Technology and Innovation Committee met at the Berkeley laboratories and, in addition to the committee discussions, the group had the opportunity to tour some of the facilities dedicated to the fenestration industry including the new FlexLab facilities.The Gas Permeability task group has decided to follow the EN 1279 procedure for gas retention with a modification to this procedure to subject units to simulated field conditions. The task group is developing those parameters and will be modifying the RFP to include them. The Advanced Testing Fenestration task group is working closely with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory to develop a “big hammer” test, which would result in faster test times. The group is also working on two other test methods, which would also result in shorter testing times by increasing the stringency of the test protocol. Currently this group is working on how to correlate the NREL thermal chamber and the two other test methods with the ASTM E 2190 standard to ensure that the new test procedures will meet or exceed the objectives in the existing standard. The Vacuum Insulating Glazing Task Group has completed the first draft of the technical bulleting, TB-2600 Vacuum Insulating Glazing. A few minor edits are still required to the 20 page technical bulletin but it is anticipated that the document may be ready for ballot by the Summer Conference. In addition to working on the Product Category Rule for fenestration products, the Life Cycle Assessment task group will be developing two new PCRs for glass. The first PCR will be for coated glass, possibly including heat-strengthened glass, and the second will be for processed glass including laminated and insulating glass.The Gas Content Field Correlation Study task group met for the first time in San Francisco, Calif. These meetings will be member-only sessions due to the sensitivity of the subject. The task group is developing the parameters to commence a study of these units.

The Technical Services Committee met the second day with reports on task groups, codes and standards development in Canada and the U.S. and reports from our affiliated organizations. The task group that developed the technical manual on multiple cavity insulating glass units has now reconvened and will be undertaking a major revision of TR-1200 Dimensional Tolerances that will include multiple cavity IGU’s but will primarily tighten up the tolerances included in the current document. This technical report has been withdrawn from circulation until it has been revised. Design Considerations for use of Capillary Tubes has been balloted to the board of directors of both IGMA and the Glas Association of North America. The comments are being compiled and, once reviewed and resolved, it will be published as a joint publication.

The IGMA 2014 Summer Conference will be held August 5 to 8 at the Hilton Quebec hotel in Quebec City, Que. The 2015 Winter Conference will be held in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and once again will be meeting in conjunction with the Insulating Glass Certification Council. The exact dates will be published once they become available.

Margaret Webb is the executive director of the Insulating Glass Manufacturers Association.