Building Enclosure Consulting

Artificial lighting leads young sea turtles away from water, resulting in their demise. Therefore, many jurisdictions in Florida have adopted a Turtle Nesting Protection Ordinance. The intention of this ordinance is to protect sea turtles and other nocturnal animals along the coastline during the nesting season by reducing light pollution. One of the associated requirements […]

  Are you planning to dispose of architectural glass samples? The ridiculously heavy, 1 foot by 1 foot squares from the long-forgotten projects, which still take up the precious space in your office? Rather than sending them to a landfill, give them to us. I grew up in a small communist country behind the iron […]

I will speak this Thursday 4/24/2014 at the BEC Fenestration Symposium in Raleigh, NC. All those who plan to come, please read this article about fenestration. It’s my old article about Glass Coolness published in The Construction Specifier in April 2013. We will talk about this stuff! See you there! Literature pertinent to the topics: Glass […]

Over one year ago I purchased a dilapidated house in Miami. Among many items that required repair, were broken windows. Seeing neighborhood kids throwing rocks at my windows, I realized that the ordinary glass wouldn’t do. I paid extra and reglazed them with polycarbonate glass. It’s something that I recommend to everyone: for approximately $100, […]

What kind of shade would you prefer to have over your head in the oppressively hot and sunny South Florida?  Many people choose their umbrellas (at the absence of rain). Solar energy may not be enough to run my photo voltaic system, but it is powerful enough to cause serious sunburns. Playing with aesthetics of miscellaneous facade expressions, you […]

Glass is one of the strongest material known to man, although few would probably guess it, because of the common perception of fragility and brittleness. It has a great compressive strength, and in a sufficiently small scale (think fiberglass) it has also tremendous tensile strength (~10 times more than the ordinary structural steel). HOW TO […]

3D Static Structural Engineering Simulations are performed for verification of stresses in the material or assembly. Below is an example of an exaggerated deflection of the curtain wall mullion receiving reaction from the roof above. Using 3D Thermal Modeling to Improve Performance Requirements by Mr. Karol Kazmierczak – JBED 2/2010  

2-Dimensional Steady State Thermal Analysis is performed on simple assemblies to identify the thermal transmittance (U value) and assess the condensation risk.  What is the thermal transmittance? It’s composed of the three modes of heat transfer: thermal heat conductivity, thermal heat conductivity, and radiation thermal.   It’s often expressed as U values (for windows, curtain walls, skylights, and other […]

How much energy can you save by adding exterior shading? What would be the return on investment on a better window? How about adding a shaded patio? Wouldn’t it get too dark inside? The only way to find out is to simulate these alternatives ahead of time, because the same component would perform differently in […]

Would it be too dark in the working spaces? Would prison guards be blinded by glare from windows precisely when inmates are out? We never loose the primary function of glazing from sight: letting the natural light in.We perform daylight simulations and illumination studies to verify the daylight factor. Particularly useful in verification of compliance […]

Glass is seldom matched properly, as seen on the photos below, and therefore owners often require a blanket glass replacement, after only few pieces have been broken or scratched. Save hundreds of thousands of dollars which would otherwise be spent on replacement of the intact old glass not matching the new replacement glass.

Glass is the design medium of the today’s architecture and it will may easily become the material of choice of tomorrow. Kaz developed a new seminar about the architectural glass, which addresses the typical architectural questions: how to use the glass to achieve the desired architectural goals, and what advances in technology help to shape the […]

This is the BEST3 Conference paper. The DVD will follow soon. Its working title is  “Skylight 101, or what you have always wanted to learn about sloped glazing.” It presents typical challenges and solutions associated with sloped glazing and skylights,

This is a follow-up to the post titled “Glass Collness.” In response to my critique of the FBC  insulated glass requirement in the South Florida, we received a question from an architect, who wrote: “Surely you would not claim that double glazing with a low-e coating on the #2 surface would cause more energy use […]

Windows are as old as buildings, the word itself derived from the ancient Norse language in times when Vikings raided North Europe. How to design a window? How should an architectural glass be chosen?  Vikings are long gone, and we found the knowledge remains common among architects in the North Europe, but has not spread much […]