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Technology Front
WHEN ALL ELSE FAILS
The idea has been around for more than
a decade,
but now existing hard-to-protect buildings have learned its value.
By Howard Shingle
Let’s
make one thing perfectly clear right from the start: Window film by itself
offers no hurricane protection. “There is not a window film by itself
that is approved as hurricane protection,” states Steve Sabac, president
of Sun Coast Glass Protection Inc., Boynton Beach, FL. “I don’t
want to see unapproved systems receive any credibility,” he adds.
But there are plenty of existing commercial buildings in South Florida and
other coastal communities built either before Hurricane Andrew or during
the decade-plus calm between Andrew and Hurricane Charlie last August. Many
of these buildings feature large expanses of windows, even glass curtain
wall construction, making replacement with impact resistant glass or shielding
with hurricane shutters or panels (or even plywood, for that matter) impractical
if not impossible.
For these specific installations, Sun Coast Glass Protection has a fully
tested and approved anchored window film system marketed as Windowlock®.
“Windowlock is actually anchoring the film and the glass to the window
frame,” Sabac explains. “And the frame may have to be further
anchored to the building. A chain is only as strong as its weakest link.
If you put film on glass and anchor the film and glass to the window frame
and the window frame isn’t anchored to the building, you’re not
doing much.”
TEST TIME
The Windowlock system has passed the same tests as hurricane shutters, panels
and laminated glass and is SBCCI-listed as hurricane protection, Sabac explains.
“They have different kinds of tests: large missile criteria for impact
testing, pressure cycling and water testing. We went through the entire
thing,” he says.
In addition, the system has two separate approvals from Factory Mutual Global,
one of the world’s largest commercial and industrial property insurance
and risk management organizations. Based in Rhode Island, Factory Mutual
specializes in property protection. It takes Dade County testing and adds
20 percent to it, Sabac says.
For example, Factory Mutual does its water testing after the window has
been impacted. “They said, ‘You know what, you do your water testing
on a window that’s not even broken. We want to see if you can keep
water out after the window has been impacted, cycled 9,000 times and then
pressurize it and hit it with water,’” Sabac says. “Our windows
have been impacted, cycled 9,000 times and then they pressurize it and not
a drop of water can come through.”
This is what sets Windowlock apart from window film, which might pass the
missile test. “But there’s also the cycle test—9,000 positive,
negative wind load cycle—and there’s the water test,” Sabac
says. And testing alone does not mean approval. “There’s a difference
between a test report and an approval report.”
Just as important, the testing documents describe exactly how the Windowlock
system has to be installed—it’s not guesswork. Installing it on
the windows and anchoring it properly requires work. Applied on the inside
of the glass, “it’s a very thick film,” Sabac explains. “It
can be anywhere from 7 mil, 14 mil, 21 mil. Twenty-one mil is extremely
thick. It’s as thick as a credit card. It’s nearly impossible
to work with. It can cut you, it requires special cutting tools.”
But it is anchoring the system that makes all the difference. A good case
in point is a 10-story West Palm Beach, FL, banking headquarters. The new
owners were renovating the entire building. “The building was just
about done when they decided, with the real threat of hurricanes, they needed
to do something,” Sabac says. “They started looking at replacing
the entire windows in the whole building and with the work, the construction
. . . they couldn’t do that. They couldn’t get shutters or plywood
up on the building. So we went in there.
“The first thing we do is analysis of the framing to see how it is
anchored to the building,” he continues. “In this case, they had
one Tapcon per side. So in a four-by-four window they had four Tapcons.
What we did was determine that the window framing wasn’t adequately
anchored, we re-anchored the windows with more Tapcons and we added Windowlock
to the existing windows and frames. We put the laminate on the glass, then
we installed the anchoring system, so we basically upgraded the entire window
system.”
THE EXISTING MARKET
Anchored film has been around for a while. It was invented for the John
Hancock building in Boston, MA. When the winds would blow downtown, the
building would twist and entire lights of glass were falling out to the
street below.
“We did the very first installation ever for hurricane protection in
1990,” Sabac says. “Andrew hit two weeks after we finished it.
There was no testing and there were no standards and there were no impact
approvals at that time. After the testing came out, we went through it,
did all the testing, because we wanted to add credibility to window film.”
Prior to Andrew, Sabac describes the building design trend as “the
sky was the limit—put in all the windows you can, just walls of glass.
After Andrew, the codes changed and people didn’t have testing on curtain
wall construction. It took years for the industry to catch up to the testing
that was required.”
And this is the market Sabac has Windowlock aimed at. “There are a
lot of glass structures out there that people throw their hands up and say,
‘Forget it, we can’t do anything. We can’t buy enough plywood,
and we’re not going to rebuild the whole building to put new windows
in it.’ That’s what we’re after.”
Another case in point: The windows at the Nielson Media Research building
in Tampa with 100,000 square feet of glass—none of it impact-resistant.
“You look at the building and you know there is no way you can panel
or shutter up the building,” says Sabac. “Their insurance company
said they had to do something. They hired us to come in. They have windows
there that are five-feet wide, 12-feet tall—60 square feet of glass.”
Before this project, Windowlock only was approved for up to 38 square feet
of glass—“It was the largest approval ever done,” Sabac says.
Nielson wanted Sun Coast Glass Protection to test larger windows. So they
went to the lab, built the window and passed the testing with Windowlock.
“We secured the job with it.” The largest window tested with anchored
film is now 60 square feet.
HOLDING STEADY
The important question, then, is how well did the anchored window film work
this past season?
“Outstanding,” Sabac says. “Charley went right through Orlando.
We did the Orlando Sentential [building] and we did the Orlando airport—both
of which did well. They didn’t see quite the high winds that we saw
in downtown West Palm Beach. The Fidelity Federal bank headquarters in downtown
West Palm Beach had steel awnings ripped off of buildings and slammed into
their windows and the windows shattered, but stayed in place. Windowlock
held them in. It was right downtown, right on the ocean.
“In Pensacola, five years ago we did three government buildings downtown.
We went to Pensacola the night Ivan was making landfall. The next morning
we went out and our buildings had broken windows, but they all held in place.
Across the street were the judicial complex and the Pensacola city hall
(buildings without anchored window film or other hurricane protection on
the openings)—the one building must have lost 70 to 80 percent of the
windows.” |
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