A quick read through any hotel’s online reviews will reveal the most common complaint the hospitality industry struggles with is noise. As anyone who has ever stayed in a hotel knows, the sounds of doors slamming at all hours and boisterous hotel guests in hallways are frequent barriers to getting a good night’s sleep while traveling.
Life safety is perhaps the most important consideration in building design, and emergency egress systems play a critical role. In particular, panic devices allow occupants to quickly and safely exit a building during emergency scenarios.
The appearance of condensation between the panes of an insulated glass (IG) unit is an indication the hermetic seal of the unit has been breached or compromised, thereby allowing outside moist air to infiltrate the air space where it condenses on the interpane surfaces of the glass. One could argue semantics, but this is the generally accepted meaning of the word “failure” as it relates to IG units. In this case, the failure is characterized by an ever-present condensation between the glass panes.
More than ever, it has become the responsibility of specification writers to ensure curtain wall products’ performance, testing, and installations are defined IN ORDER to meet project requirements. A properly installed, field-assembled stock length curtain wall can meet industry leading performance standards, and support continued construction challenges with regard to availability of qualified labor, as well as fast-track project schedules.
Fully tempered glass offers designers certain advantages over annealed and heat-strengthened glass, including increased strength to resist imposed loads and thermal stresses, as well as a characteristic breakage pattern in a “relatively safe” manner; however, these features come at the cost of increased optical distortion and an often overlooked risk of spontaneous breakage in-service due to nickel sulfide inclusions.
