As expected, it’s happened and now that it has, you need to act. You need to act because it’s the right thing to do and besides, if you don’t, it will cost you money–not hypothetical, not theoretical but real and actual money. Please don’t avert your eyes because yes, I am talking to YOU.

As anticipated, the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) has proposed an amendment to its BSR/ASHRAE/USGBC/IES Addendum 189.1am-201x, Standard for the Design of High-Performance Green Buildings Except Low-Rise Residential Buildings (addenda to ANSI/ASHRAE/USGBC/IES Standard 189.1-2011) that, according to ASHRAE “tightens the prescriptive requirements for window-to-wall ratios from 40 percent  for all buildings to 30 percent for buildings less than 25,000 square feet and 40 percent for all larger buildings.”

So this addendum would reduce the permitted window-to-wall ratio (WWR) of glass from 40 to 30 percent in small- and medium-sized buildings.  And it would eliminate the conditions that had permitted WWRs of greater than 40 percent in larger buildings.

Let’s look at what that exactly would mean on a typical five-story office building with 5,000 square feet of façade surface of each of four sides. The amount of allowable glazing would be decreased from 8000 square feet to 6000 square feet—a net loss of 25 percent. That means 25 percent less glass will be permitted. It also means that 25 percent less glass needs to manufactured, fabricated, sold, installed, caulked and cleaned.

So you can see that such a change will affect everyone from those who make, or fabricate or install glass, to those who make adhesives and glass fabrication equipment or provide other supplies to the glazing industry.

Now what has glass done to deserve this punishment? Well, it’s biggest crime seems to be letting the HVAC guys at ASHRAE pick on it than their own inefficient equipment. And what has the glass industry done to fight it? Not enough.

Let me give you some perspective. In the early 1990s, ASHRAE came up with a new code, called 90.1P, that was extremely dismissive of glass. It called for wide-scale changes in the types and amounts of glass that could be used in buildings.

At that time, our industry was … dare I say it? … even more fragmented than it is today. We were much more divided along fabrication lines and much more public in our disputes. As a result, you would see temperers introducing one proposal before the code groups and laminators another completely at odds with the temperers.  Some of the fights over wired glass were particularly contentious. In short, the glass industry was not known for playing nice together. And since “glass is just glass” to most other people, code officials rarely understood what they quickly dismissed as infighting from an industry lacking cohesion.

All this gave the energy bullies just the opportunity they needed to step in and pummel us with a fistful of onerous codes. Oh, it’s all been done in the name of energy-savings of course and it’s saved a ton. It’s saved those heating and cooling guys a lot of energy because they didn’t have to invest time in developing new or more energy-efficient HVAC systems; they instead “found” energy-savings by requiring glass to perform more efficiently and by saying “hey, if it can’t we will just cut the amount of glass you can use.”

It all sounds too screwy to have worked, except that it did. ASHRAE was able to capitalize on the glass industry’s lack of organization and went to town. It took awhile for our industry to recognize a threat and even longer to get everyone on our side in the fight. By the time a fighting opposition was in place, all it could do was affect the content of the codes. It was too late to mount an offense against the purported legitimacy of ASHRAE to right codes outside their main scope. And then ASHRAE, now seen as the leader in these things, went out and got support for their energy code from groups such as the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC).

So we lost that legitimacy argument long ago. Now, I fear we will lose this important issue. And ASHRAE learned it had the glass industry to kick around.

So here is what you can do. There is an open comment period of 45 days which ends next month.  Please order a copy of the Standard and Addendum and  take the time to read the proposed changes.  There are a wide variety of good reasons why this is a bad proposal.  We need to provide those reasons to ASHRAE in writing by the deadline date.

ASHRAE says it can be obtained in electronic copy from: http://www.techstreet.com/ashrae/ashrae_standards.html, although the link did not work for me Friday. It is free and can also be ordered by contacting Bert Etheredge at 404/636-8400 or emailing betheredge@ashrae.org.

Once you have read it, please submit comments via the ASHRAE website at https://osr.ashrae.org/default.aspx, and if you feel like it, send a copy to me or Dr. Thomas Culp, who is representing the Glazing Industry Codes Council (the group formed to monitor and sync code action by the glass industry). Dr. Culp can be reached at culp@birchpointconsulting.com.

Get some architects and designer friends to talk about how the reduction of glass would affect buildings aesthetically. The more and distinct objections we have to this absurd proposal the better.

The industry was too busy fighting among itself to ward off the opening shot against it 20 years ago. Let’s be smarter this time because if glazing gets reduced again, eventually the buildings in our cities will look like the skyline of Sao Paulo, Brazil. They’ve had strict WWRs in place for quite some time. See much glass? See what I mean?