A crew of Serious Materials employees rebuilt the Empire State Building’s 6,514 existing windows onsite. After the window frames were pulled apart and the gaskets were scraped off, the glass was cleaned and inspected. Then a new window unit was assembled with a clear aluminum solar film suspended in the middle of the two panes of glass. An argon/krypton gas also was blown in.
a new window unit was assembled in which a clear aluminum solar film, manu- factured by Serious Materi- als, was suspended in the middle of the two panes of glass. An argon/krypton gas also was blown in. The solar film and inert gas increase the windows’ R-value to be- tween 6 and 8 and achieve a heat-gain coefficient of approximately 0.5. “The glass was switched
around so the outside face of the pane was now the inside face to mitigate the weathering of the glass,” Rode says. “Technically the windows now are triple glazed: two panes of glass and one pane that is really the film.” The team sought a
solar film that wouldn’t block any visible light but would block ultraviolet and infrared rays, which would contribute to cooling loads. “We did a model and were able to ‘tune’ the film based on the elevation it is placed on the building,” Rode says. “We looked at the effects of bringing natural light in compared to artificial lighting and got the right
48 RETROFIT // May-June 2013
balance so we weren’t us- ing more energy through artificial lighting and were reducing heating and cool- ing needs.” Rode says it was more
economical to retrofit the building’s existing windows than buy new high-perfor- mance windows. “What a shame it would have been to throw away more than 26,000 panes of glass—and what an expense in Man- hattan!” he says. “Not only did we avoid throwing win- dows out, we also avoided the costs of trucking and distribution.” It took about nine
months to retrofit all 6,514 windows, and Rode is proud of the project because it is achieving the results the team expected. “The R-values and coefficiency are holding up,” he says. “By doing the windows, we removed so much air-conditioning load we prevented the cooling plant from increasing in size for conditioning the hallways.”
From the Top In addition to the win-
dow retrofit happening
throughout the Empire State Building, a major glass replacement took place in the building’s upper observatory on the 102nd floor—almost 0.25 mile above the ground. The round observatory is small, approximately 40 feet in diameter, and completely enclosed with 32 lites of glass that encircle the perimeter of the room. The existing single-pane
1/2-inch monolithic glass featured a radio-frequency- repellent film but provided no thermal performance. The film was deteriorat- ing, which was affecting the clarity of the glass. Brooklyn, N.Y.-based Kilroy Architectural Windows had replaced the building’s 6,514 windows 14 years previously and was invited to install the new glass on the observatory. “There were a number of design issues that had to be addressed,” explains Bill Kennedy, Kilroy Architec- tural Windows’ senior vice president. “One was the need for scratch-resistant glass on the interior.
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