GlassTalk

Canada’s architectural glass show comes to Calgary Oct. 16 – 17 and Glass Canada’s intrepid brand manager, Leslie Osborne, joins GlassTalk to give you all the details. We’ll be touring the local glass fabrication plant of the might Oldcastle Building Envelope. We’ll be talking about office-to-residential conversions. We’ll be looking at the future of glass. We’ll be debating contract changes from performance modelling. We’ll look at ways to certify different glass sizes. And we’ll be celebrating Alberta’s fine young glazing apprentices. It’s going to be a great couple days – see you at Top Glass West!

Register here: Canada’s architectural glass show comes to Calgary Oct. 16 – 17 and Glass Canada’s intrepid brand manager, Leslie Osborne, joins GlassTalk to give you all the details. We’ll be touring the local glass fabrication plant of the might Oldcastle Building Envelope. We’ll be talking about office-to-residential conversions. We’ll be looking at the future of glass. We’ll be debating contract changes from performance modelling. We’ll look at ways to certify different glass sizes. And we’ll be celebrating Alberta’s fine young glazing apprentices. It’s going to be a great couple days – see you at Top Glass West!

Register here: https://www.topglasswest.ca

New standards for energy efficiency and low carbon impact in construction are demanding new skills in the trades – skills your young workers might be more familiar with than you are. Chad Flinn, associate vice-president of academics at Red Deer Polytechnic, and Judi Varga-Toth, manager of the ImpAct-Climate program at Colleges and Institutes Canada, are working to educate today’s construction industry in how to design and install the elements of net zero buildings. Learning needs to be ongoing in this time of rapid change, and Flinn and Varga-Toth share insights and free online resources in this episode of Glass Talk.

Glass Canada editor Patrick Flannery has a big announcement for you! Top Glass, Canada’s trade event for the architectural glass industry is coming to the Best Western Premier in Calgary on Oct. 17. And that’s not all…on Oct. 16, you can tour Oldcastle Building Envelope’s Calgary fabrication facility and see advanced glazing components being manufactured before your very eyes. Tune in as Flannery goes over all the details. Then register at topglasswest.ca. See you at Top Glass West!

Helen Sanders, general manager at Technoform and chair of the Fenestration and Glazing Industry Alliance Glass Products Research Committee, celebrates her 30th year in the industry by joining GlassTalk to talk about their work on the cutting edges of glass technology. The Committee is looking at new ways to confirm the amount of argon fill in IGUs; developing industry Product Category Rules for fabricated glass and load-testing vaccuum insulating glass, among other things. It’s red meat for glass nerds on the dock this summer.å

By Anton Van Dyk’s count, there are now up to 15 separate areas where fenestration products have to demonstrate compliance to one regulatory regime or another. Embodied carbon will soon become another, yet both end users and manufacturers have been slow to understand things like Environmental Product Declarations and how they will affect product development. Van Dyk and Layton think the approach to lowering the carbon cost of our buildings has created confusion. They join the podcast to outline their vision for how we should go forward.

When information technology is the topic, media outlets across the country turn to Carmi Levy to explain what is going on and give them the deep background on the issues. So we invited him to Glass Talk to share some very practical advice on how to think about your IT department and personnel and how to source and vet providers that will make your life and business better, not worse. Choosing the right people, in-house versus outsourcing, common pitfalls to avoid, how to choose the right product, what to expect from a vendor – Levy has seen it all and we discuss it all.

When Andrew Haring announced he was leaving his role as business development director for the National Glass Association, it set off a mini-storm on social media. Why? Because in his time with the NGA Haring became one of the better known and respected personalities on the North American glass scene. His blend of humour, honesty and deep familiarity with our business has made him someone we’d all like to listen to and converse with. Well, here’s your chance. Haring joins Glass Talk to reflect on his time at NGA, his career so far, the state of the industry, certification, attracting young talent, marketing strategy and more.

It’s happened – a Canadian jurisdiction has mandated a maximum allowable temperature inside a dwelling space. The Vancouver rule is related to health and safety rather than energy efficiency, but it seems likely that requirements for cooling homes will soon put pressure on fenestration designers to restrict solar heat gain in addition to insulating against heat loss. Is the market reacting? How will this change our designs? Guardian’s Pacific Northwest ADM, Geoff Shellard, returns to Glass Talk to shed some light on the topic.

Our fast-changing world of tightening energy standards and embodied carbon is challenging us all to look at different design approaches and different materials. Enter a true Canadian glass innovator – Advanced Glazings in Sydney, N.S., and their Solera and SoleraWall products that use an aerogel fill to make translucent architectural glass products with energy performance similar to vacuum insulated glass. CEO Satterwhite and founder and president Milburn join the podcast to explain aerogel; discuss the performance characteristics; talk about how daylighting can meet aesthetic, health and energy conservation needs; and reveal how they have found success with a product few glass companies in the world have the expertise to make.

Storm clouds are gathering over the architectural glass industry as 2024 starts. FenCan Commercial business development director and Glass Canada columnist Rich Porayko joins GlassTalk for a New Year episode looking back at the top stories from 2023 and ahead to what they might mean for 2024. Embodied carbon, bankruptcies, VIG, new organizations and events, labour…it’s all on the table in our wide-ranging conversation.