Glass Week opened with workhorse action today as a variety of divisional and task groups meeting took place. Both the Insulating Division and its related committees held sessions in the morning, which culminated with a joint meeting between IGMA and GANA about all things insulating.
GANA account executive Ashley Charest announced that the insulating division is quite healthy, having picked up four new members without any attrition this year. The group also honored outgoing division chair Tracy Rogers of Edgetech, who has accepted a position on the GANA board of directors and is no longer eligible to chair the division. Rogers was presented with a glass award for his work.
The group then turned its attention to updated and new standards during its joint meeting. John Kent of the Insulating Glass Certification Council talked about the rigors of the updated 2190 Standard.
“I want to make sure that everyone is aware that, for a variety of reasons, this Standard is going to be much more rigorous than it has been in the past,” he said. “This is because we basically have two standards coming together as one and our procedures states that two failures mean removal from the list.”
Kent said a list of approved products has been created and that inclusion on the list will be limited to those products that have 2190 reports filed with the IGCC.
The issue of desiccant quantity also was discussed. Kent mentioned that IGMA has reformatted how it categorizes sealants to separate silicone sealants into two separate categories – one for one-part and one for two-part.
The Fire-Rating Glazing Council also met in the morning. Gerald Jackson of Vetrotech Saint-Gobain discussed the recently completed AIA course about fire-rated glazing. “The course will be a half credit,” he said, “All that remains is the development of some test questions.”
Thomas Zaremba of Roetzel & Andress updated the group about the code-related activities of the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) that affect glazing.
Chief among these is a pending proposed revision to NFPA 80 which, Zaremba explained, has gone through many incarnations. The proposed changes are an attempt to ensure that those replacing fire-rated glazing in wood doors are properly trained to do so.
“In most schools nowadays, this job falls to the janitors,” he said, “and there is really no way to know if they are properly trained or not. One proposal would have allowed the glass to be installed by manufacturers only. … We asked NFPA to revisit the issue. The compromise is that on new wooden doors, the glazing will either be done by the manufacturers under label service or by listed personnel. This will require training and programs that do not yet exist, but they could be put in place in the future, he explained.”
Zaremba said the issue will be voted upon at the NFPA meting in August.
