Fiberglass reinforced plastic windows replaced aluminum windows

Fiberglass reinforced plastic windows replaced aluminum windows. The good news is that the window market appears to be on the rebound, with 42.7 million units shipped in 2011 and projected shipments of more than 48 million windows this year. Of the 42.7 million windows shipped last year, vinyl windows accounted for 29.4 million units, or about 69 percent of the market. Wood windows, including vinyl-clad and metal-clad wood (20 percent), and aluminum (6 percent) were the second and third most-shipped windows. Fiberglass window profiles and frames, by comparison, captured a little more than 3 percent of the total market share, at 1.2 million units. However, annual shipments of fiberglass windows are forecast to more than double those recorded in 2009, reaching 2.6 million units per annum during 2015.

The growth in the use of pultruded fiberglass window components will be driven, in part, by new technology and an increasing demand in the market for windows that are capable of better performance. Pultruded fiberglass windows offer greater dimensional stability, impact resistance, strength and color fastness than the vinyl and wood windows that still dominate the residential construction market. But the dramatically improved thermal performance of fiberglass windows is promising gains in once out-of-reach commercial building construction, where fiberglass windows are increasingly seen as an attractive and viable alternative to aluminum windows.

The low thermal conductivity of fiberglass permits the design of windows with U values (the measure of thermal transmittance) two to three times better than those of their aluminum counterparts. Further, the manufacture of fiberglass consumes 57 times less energy than the manufacture of aluminum from bauxite, a selling point for companies and customers that want to establish their “green” credentials. With the cost of energy generally on the rise over the past decade, building architects and owners are realizing now that they can recoup the cost of replacing aluminum windows with fiberglass windows quite quickly — an awareness that is spreading with the emergence of “green” building programs in large cities, such as New York. Owner awareness and “green” initiatives have presented new opportunities for purveyors of fiberglass windows and those who pultrude the profiles and lineals.

The fiberglass replacement windows damped sound better than the aluminum originals in all cases, and in the Bruce Curtis Building, where humidity must be kept relatively high (above 40 percent) to preserve the museum artifacts, the improved thermal performance of the fiberglass windows eliminated condensation that had formed on the aluminum frames.

Notably, color matching was not an issue. The window frames and sashes in the installations at Woodbury Hall and the Bruce Curtis Building were matched successfully to the colors of the previous windows. For the sake of architectural aesthetics, some windows in the Visual Arts Center were framed in “thermally broken” aluminum (an aluminum frame with an inside layer insulated from the outside layer). Clarke claims, “In areas where the fiberglass and aluminum windows are side by side, people cannot tell the difference due to the precise matching of black paint and substrate patina.”

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