A Partnership Mother Nature Would Approve Of: Award-Winning Bird-Friendly AviProtek^® and Solarban^® Solar Control Low-e Glass

Each year, more than 600 million birds die from collisions with glass in the United States alone. Although bird-friendly building regulations continue to increase in North America, glazing options have been limited.

Here’s a quick demonstration that will give you an understanding of low-emissivity or low-e glass.

In How Glass is Made, From the Batch House to the Lehr we covered how glass starts as a simple combination of sand, soda ash, limestone and dolomite, moves to the batch house, enters the furnace, and then goes through the melting, fining, forming, annealing, and cooling processes.

The North American Glass Channel chart demonstrates the many different processes involved in the production of commercial glass and the capabilities of the largest channel participants from primary glass manufacturers and low-e coating manufacturers, to glass fabricators and glazing contractors.

Glass is one of the most popular and versatile building materials used today, due in part to its constantly improving solar and thermal performance. One way this performance is achieved is through the use of passive and solar control low-e coatings. So, what is low-e glass? In this section, we provide you with an in-depth overview of coatings.

Understanding the solar energy spectrum is the first step in understanding how low-e coatings work.

Learn more about our full line of Low-E Glass products.

Low-E coatings are 500 times as thin as a human hair, yet have a tremendous impact on a building's overall energy efficiency.

Learn more about our full line of Low-E Glass products.

While aesthetically versatile and offering outstanding performance, working with glass does come with some special considerations. This is especially relevant in commercial architecture, where it’s common to specify large glass panels to achieve a dramatic look. A thermal stress break is one such issue.