The Insulating Glass Manufacturers Alliance (IGMA) is working to reduce its environmental footprint. During its Summer Technical Meetings, which took place last week at the Hyatt Regency Montreal in Quebec, the event was paperless as all of the meeting information, including agendas, minutes, technical presentations, IGMA policies and working documents for the groups and committees, was provided to attendees on USB drives.”We received extremely positive feedback on doing this so we will definitely be repeating it,” says Margaret Webb, IGMA executive director. “We provided electricity to the groups meeting as well as to the observers. The agendas and minutes were posted to the IGMA website for the attendees to download in advance and we did notify everyone that we would not be providing printed materials. All in all this was an extremely successful, efficient and effective way for the groups to have access to the documents. I also ensured that everyone could see what was being posted to the screen when we were working on document edits.”

And there were a number of documents that were reviewed and worked on last week by various committees and working groups.

During the Certification and Education Committee meeting members reviewed the PowerPoint presentation for TM-4000, an introductory overview on how to use the manual and implement a quality control program for a manufacturer’s specific requirements. Each section is addressed with a minimum of four slides and each section includes its purpose, key considerations for the element, sample work instructions to provide guidance and sample forms to indicate the information that should be captured. The presentation will now be balloted to the committee.

Activities of the Glazing Guidelines Working Group focused on the current activities of the joint IGMA-GANA Task Group that is working to develop manufacturing guidelines for the use of capillary tubes. Key design considerations have been developed and the task group is now working on language for each of the items included in the technical bulletin.

During the Gas Permeability Working Group CAN-BEST presented the design for the new test cell and test sample specification for Phase 2 -Evaluation of the Gas Permeability of Edge Seal Assemblies. Over the next two weeks, CAN-BEST will work on validating the effectiveness and the repeatability of the cell to measure samples at the sensitivity required. The working group approved the work to date and will meet by conference call and webinar to monitor the remainder of stage one. Once the test cell design has been validated and approved, the project will proceed to stage two, which is the actual testing of samples.

The Thermal Stress Working Group reviewed and finalized a list of conditions that may or may not contribute to thermal stress. Examples include solar absorption, shading conditions, frame color, as well as many others. Volunteers were selected to write the text for each condition and to identify the single condition for the potential of low, medium or high thermal stress. The group also will develop guidelines for a combination of conditions once the information has been approved for individual ones.

A working group focusing on Design Considerations for Multiple Airspace IGUs met for the first time and will work on developing a technical report addressing issues such as thermal stress, gas content, wind load, stresses on seal system, coatings, fabrication techniques, altitude limits, glazing considerations (e.g. misalignment), non structural intermediate layers (e.g. suspended coated film), glass thickness (asymmetric constructions – glass and airspace), structural glazing applications, exterior condensation and optical considerations that may have special considerations for triple, quad and greater glazed IGUs.

The Technical Services Committee was also busy with a number of projects. Some of the group’s activities included:
• Reviewing the status of code changes in Canada and the United States;
• Reviewing the new requirements for the ENERGY STAR^TM programs in Canada and the United States;
• Approving funding for the ASTM Thermal Stress project and the AAMA Sloped Glazing document revision;
• Approving participation in a cross organization publication resource library; and
• Reviewing the status of the TM-4000-02 (07) document revision as well as the current status of various working group projects.

IGMA’s next meeting will be its 2010 Annual Conference that will take place during the Glass Association of North America’s Glass Week, March 24 – 27, in Las Vegas.