The desire to improve indoor air quality (IAQ), increase energy efficiency, and reduce carbon footprints is bringing architects and engineers in various business sectors to the table in search of cost-effective solutions to the challenge of going green. Raised access floors can provide sustainable, high-performance benefits in both new construction and retrofit applications. These assemblies also bring improvements to personal comfort, acoustics, energy efficiency, daylighting, and esthetics, while ensuring reductions in operating costs and downtime associated with technological and workspace organizational changes.

Since ceramic tile and stone are often installed in wet areas, they require long-term control of intermittent or constant moisture. The majority of waterproofing problems involve only one per cent of the project’s installation area. On projects exposed to moisture, this means successfully installing 99 per cent of the job can still result in a failure that damages the entire tiled area.

During a recent visit to the dentist, this author discovered the floor in the waiting area was particularly lively; there were uncomfortable vibrations whenever occupants passed in a nearby corridor. Architects and engineers understand a structure’s motion of this sort rarely implies danger, but to the uninformed end-user, these perceptible movements are often unexpected and unwelcomed.

A roof hatch, also referred to as an access hatch or roof scuttle, provides convenient access to and from a rooftop area in a commercial building or large multi-family project with mechanical systems up top. They are most common on flat roofs, but can be adapted for pitched assemblies as well.

When building owners were surveyed in a 2005 study commissioned by Ducker Research Company, the most important criteria for choosing roofing materials, they ranked service life and lifecycle cost first and second, while initial cost came in second-last (i.e. ninth place).

Since 1985, the National Building Code of Canada (NBC) requirements for an air barrier system have been adopted for all buildings in this country. While the air barrier concept is widely accepted by industry, its application can be particularly difficult and challenging when it comes to structures predating that code. With just over 25 years of this technology’s development, there remains a large proportion of existing buildings that have no air leakage control (i.e. no air barrier system).

If the concept of building science could be distilled to one essential sentence, it would be the now-famous aphorism of Joseph Lstiburek, PhD, P. Eng., building science expert and adjunct professor of civil engineering at the University of Toronto. “The perfect wall is an environmental separator—it has to keep the outside out and the inside in,” he wrote. Lstiburek’s “perfect wall” (or roof or slab) includes four primary layers: rain control, air control, vapour control, and thermal control.

The science of daylighting design is to adequately illuminate interiors without imposing additional cooling energy loads. Sunlight entering buildings through glazed assemblies can help reduce electric lighting loads and improve indoor comfort levels. However, over-lit interiors and glass with poor thermal performance can cause adverse side effects like glare, heat loss, and undesired solar heat gain.

In the summer of 2011, there were numerous incidents of spontaneous breakage of monolithic tempered safety glass employed in balcony guard infill panels or balustrades. As some of these occurrences were located in Toronto, the subject of balcony guard glass became a media obsession. For balcony guard designers, manufacturers, glass processors, building developers, building officials, and condominium owners, the subject became a nightmare.

Glass is the most common material in the construction of any building’s exterior façade. It is used in windows, doors, curtain walls, skylights, guards, and canopies, as well as in the form of single-pane, double or triple insulating glass (IG) units, and laminated assemblies. Given the high demand for glass and glazing assemblies, and the recent amendment to the Ontario Building Code (OBC) that draws attention to the risks related to balcony glass, it is crucial glazed assemblies meet industry standards.