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GBlist: Re: ideal environmental window



on Wed Sep 24 1997
jdo@acs.ucalgary.ca ("Jorg D. Ostrowski") wrote:

[snipped & pasted for brevity]

>    Perhaps the cladding to protect the exterior wood could be: 
>    ...(1) environmentally-sound paint 2) prepainted or
>    enamelled recycled steel 3) recycled plastic

>    The wood could be strawboard 

Hello Jorg and IdealHeads;

I have to wonder if there is such a thing as an "environmentally-
sound" paint that will stand up to the rigourous conditions that
a window experiences. 
Aren't such paints usually a chemical stew ? (I don't think I'd
care to drink the stuff.)

IMO, paint over rot-prone material in *any* exterior application
is a short-lived, high-maintenance and generally unsatisfactory
solution to the problem of weather protection. The better
solution would seem to be to use an inherently weather-resistant
material.

I'm not sure that painted, recycled steel is any more Green
Virtuous either. I don't have any numbers for the energy inputs
required to recycle steel but I suspect that it is almost as high
as for new steel.

In view of the fact that strawboard is dimensionally unstable in
the presence of moisture, it would seem to be a poor choice for
something that requires the close tolerances that window frames
and sash would demand.

Perhaps something like the recycled wood composites or recycled
plastic that are used for outdoor deck lumber, which are
inherently weather-resistant to the core, could be used. I have no
idea what the R & U values are for these materials, but I suspect it is
comparable to real wood and certainly better than aluminum.


I've never seen the "pull-truded" shredded fiberglass/resin
frame/sash windows produced by Accurate Dorwin, Winnipeg Manitoba
(204) 667-5078) (mentioned in Wayne Grady's "Green Home"), but it
seems that AD's idea would be a reasonable alternative to painted
or aluminum-clad wood. 

AD's R-8 centre of glass (or Canadian rating of ER-1 (net energy
gain of 1 watt per square metre in *any* orientation in winter)
sounds pretty good too. Perhaps not ideal, but not bad. Eh ?
--
Rob  Tom
---------- * ------------
be417@FreeNet.Carleton.ca
Kanata,  Ontario,  Canada

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