Liam Casey – Toronto Star

Micro­scopic imper­fec­tions buried within the pane are behind the spate of explod­ing glass bal­conies on down­town condo tow­ers, an engi­neer says.

Mark Brook is a part­ner at BVDA Façade Engi­neer­ing which is ana­lyz­ing glass from the north tower of the Murano build­ing, where at least nine panes have exploded since last September.

Brook recently dis­cov­ered nickel sul­fide crys­tals in two shat­tered panes. These crys­tals grow over time, which stresses the glass. If the imper­fec­tion is in the right place, the pres­sure builds until the pane explodes.

“It’s either bul­lets or inclu­sions,” Brook said. “And there’s no evi­dence someone’s shoot­ing at the balconies.”

To get a defin­i­tive answer, Brook needed at least one of two spe­cific bits of glass where the explo­sion orig­i­nated — the por­tion con­tain­ing the nickel sul­fide crys­tal. That’s nearly impos­si­ble when a pane explodes into hun­dreds of pieces strewn across a busy street.

But the engi­neer­ing firm was lucky. It had been test­ing intact pan­els from the north tower of the Murano build­ing as the devel­oper took them down. One night, a pane rest­ing against a wall in the test­ing facil­ity exploded. They found their spe­cific glass bit.

“It’s not poor instal­la­tion,” Brook said. “It’s not wind, it’s not the weather, it’s these imperfections.”

Brook first sus­pected the faulty glass was from a bad batch. It was actu­ally sev­eral con­t­a­m­i­nated batches from man­u­fac­tur­ing facil­i­ties in the United States that ended up in Toronto.

“Explod­ing glass isn’t that abnor­mal,” Brook said. “It’s just been mak­ing the news because it’s been explod­ing onto busy streets like Bay St.”

Brook’s firm has been con­tracted by Lanterra Devel­op­ments to exam­ine the glass on three of its con­dos where bal­cony rail­ings have shat­tered: the two Murano tow­ers as well as One Bed­ford Rd. The devel­oper has said it will replace the tem­pered panes with the safer lam­i­nated vari­ety — an inner layer of tem­pered glass and an outer layer of heat-strengthened glass sand­wich­ing a sheet of plas­tic — on these and all future projects.

Glass has also shat­tered on three Toronto build­ings built by other developers.

———————————————————————————————————————
Con­tact the Jef­frey Team for more infor­ma­tion – 416−388−1960

Lau­rin & Natalie Jef­frey are Toronto Real­tors with Cen­tury 21 Regal Realty.
They did not write these arti­cles, they just repro­duce them here for peo­ple
who are inter­ested in Toronto real estate. They do not work for any builders.
———————————————————————————————————————

Related posts:

1. Liv­ing in glass houses There are things we hope will fall from the sky.…
2. Falling condo glass issue to be con­sid­ered at com­mit­tee meet­ing Toronto Building’s chief build­ing offi­cial was asked to report on…
3. Falling condo glass may be under­re­ported, coun­cil­lor sug­gests Wor­ries about shat­ter­ing glass and exactly whom res­i­dents of Toronto…
4. Frenzy of ris­ing con­dos, fears over falling glass The com­pany has come under scrutiny in recent weeks after…
5. What’s the future of glass houses? Sum­mer 2011 was punc­tu­ated with inci­dents of falling glass from…