Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:08] Speaker B: Welcome to the Clear Impact Podcast brought to you by Mitre Brands University. Thanks for joining us today. My name is Sheri Conner and I am your host.
So, good morning. We are here on the Clear Impact podcast and we are in a series called windows and doors 101. And this is perfect for anybody that is new to the industry or for homeowners that are doing some research. Anybody that's just a little curious about Windows and doors. And so in studio we have Jim Shank. Welcome.
[00:00:45] Speaker A: Good morning. It's good to see you.
[00:00:46] Speaker B: Good to have you in. Thanks for making time for this. Absolutely, thank you. So we are going to be talking about common concerns around windows and doors. And so before we get into that, I want to know a little bit about you.
[00:01:00] Speaker A: A little bit about me. Well, I joined PGT in late 2017 and it was actually my second career, having spent 30 plus years in another career. So Windows and Doors was new to me at that point in time and I had an opportunity to work on our production floor and actually build windows. Didn't build doors, but spent a little bit of time building windows on our production line. Had a fantastic time. Really enjoyed that. I was actually working third shift at the time, so it was the night shift.
[00:01:30] Speaker B: Oh, boy.
[00:01:30] Speaker A: And yeah, it was a little different for me. I didn't see my family for a little bit because we were on opposite schedules. But, you know, it was just a learning experience. It was tactical. I could do things with my hands and really enjoyed it. Had a lot of good experience in learning there. And then shortly thereafter, I had an opportunity to join our training team, our customer training team. It was called Dealer Education at that point in time. And I have been in what we now call Miter Branch University.
I've been involved in the university ever since.
[00:02:01] Speaker B: Nice.
[00:02:02] Speaker A: Yeah, it's been a lot of fun.
[00:02:03] Speaker B: Yeah, it is fun to have you as part of our team, actually the leader of the team. The fearless leader of the team because we're a bunch of hooligans and we like to have fun and you try to keep us all in check.
[00:02:14] Speaker A: Well, I like to have fun too.
[00:02:16] Speaker B: Yeah, of course.
So we are going to be talking about things that people don't necessarily think about and of course we're talking to a very broad audience. So let's start with doors. Okay. So in swing doors versus outswing doors.
[00:02:31] Speaker A: Oh, this is a great topic. I love this one. So this issue, this topic has to do with a lot of different things. Geography in the United States comes into play. Personal preference comes into play. And potentially not in every case, but potentially building code can come into play as well on this one. But the idea is your front entrance door into your home. When you try to enter your home, does the door swing out or does it swing in? And that's what we refer to in swing versus outswing. Most of the people in Florida, now I'm painting with a very brush here, but most of the people in Florida have migrated here from somewhere else. If you're on the east coast of Florida, it's i95 corridor. So the northeastern part of the United States. If you're on the west coast of Florida, it's the i75 corridor. So it's the Midwest and the upper Midwest. Anyone that is from those northern regions, they're used to in swing doors. Okay. That's what they were brought up with. That's what they know from, you know, years and years of going in and out of your home. Why in swing doors in the northern area? In the Midwest it's a necessity because of snow.
[00:03:36] Speaker B: Oh, right, yeah.
[00:03:37] Speaker A: If you think about it, I mean, I can tell you a personal story from years ago. I mean 25 years ago where I was in Erie, Pennsylvania one evening and had appointments that following morning and I went into my hotel room, you know, went to bed, got up the next morning, came outside and couldn't find my car because it had snowed all night or they had gotten four feet of snow.
[00:03:59] Speaker B: Oh my God.
[00:04:00] Speaker A: In one night. And I'm not kidding, it's the lake effect snow.
[00:04:03] Speaker B: Right.
[00:04:03] Speaker A: It was crazy. But if you can imagine in that situation, if you're in a residential home, a single family home, and if you had outswing doors and you tried to exit your home, the snow would be blocking your door. You cannot get out. And that's a safety issue. It's an egress issue from a code standpoint. So up north you don't use outswing doors. Down here, however, we have things called storms and the really bad ones are called hurricanes.
[00:04:26] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:04:27] Speaker A: So you don't want an in swing door down south in a storm ridden area because the pressure of the storm can blow in that door and and that causes catastrophic damage to your home or could not in every case, but it can.
So in swing door in the southern regions really aren't preferable. So organization, our company, we build outswing doors. That's what we do because we're in a storm ridden area.
[00:04:54] Speaker B: So an outswing door is stronger than an in swing door?
[00:04:57] Speaker A: Well, it can be depending upon the style of Door and the type of door, the material that it's made from. But it's more about the framing around the door. If you have an outswing door, when that storm is pushing against it, what is holding that door? You know, what is keeping that door from pushing in? Well, it's the entire frame around the door. It's the left side, the right side, the jambs, we call them, as well as the header and the footer. So in theory, the stronger the storm, the more secure that door is because it's being pressed into the frame in a stronger way.
[00:05:30] Speaker B: Right.
[00:05:30] Speaker A: If you had an in swing door in that same home in Florida, then that same pressure from that same storm, the only thing holding that door closed is about an inch and a half of your lock set. When you turn your knob and that plunger goes into the door, it recesses into the door. That plunger is the only thing keeping your door from blowing open.
[00:05:50] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:05:51] Speaker A: So it's a profound difference. There are some jurisdictions, not a lot, but there are some jurisdictions in a coastal area that actually now requires outswing doors because of storms.
[00:06:03] Speaker B: Right.
[00:06:04] Speaker A: But you need to check your local jurisdiction for that.
[00:06:06] Speaker B: Okay, well, that's good to know.
[00:06:07] Speaker A: Yeah, it's fun.
[00:06:08] Speaker B: Yeah. And you want to make sure, obviously, that if you have an in swing door now, and you heard this podcast and you said, I need to change my door before hurricane season, and I wanted to change it to an outswing door. Is that a big deal?
[00:06:20] Speaker A: No, they take the framing out when they replace it. Yeah. You just have to be careful when you're approaching your home. Depending upon the style of home you have, if it's an older construction home with a steeply pitched roof, you need to make sure that the eave that's coming down from the roof would not obstruct the swinging of the outswing action of the door itself.
[00:06:40] Speaker B: Oh, right.
[00:06:40] Speaker A: You know, you don't want to bump into the eave up above.
[00:06:43] Speaker B: Right. Yeah, that makes sense.
[00:06:45] Speaker A: Yeah. You just have to be careful of that.
[00:06:46] Speaker B: Okay. So that takes care of in swing and outswing doors. Here's a big one that we get calls on a lot, especially when it's cooler outside and warmer inside, or vice versa. And that is condensation.
[00:07:00] Speaker A: That's one of my favorite topics.
[00:07:02] Speaker B: Ye. Yeah. So let's talk about. Is condensation normal?
[00:07:05] Speaker A: Condensation is 100% normal.
[00:07:08] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:07:09] Speaker A: It's a matter of physics. It doesn't matter where you are located, doesn't matter what the situation is. Physics is physics. Nature is nature. So if you have an extreme temperature difference, and really, truly, it doesn't have to be that extreme. Depending upon the material that we're talking about, which we'll get into, condensation can take place. And for example, for those listening, I have a water bottle in front of me and it has cold water in it. Now, we're in a cool room at the moment, but this water bottle is still condensating. It's natural. In fact, I looked it up. There's a definition for condensation and says it involves the change of state from gas to a liquid due to one of two things. It's either a decrease or increase in temperature, or it's an increase in pressure. Oh, so there's an elevation component as well. Now, in Florida, I think we're probably at an elevation of like 10ft where we're sitting right now. In Florida, we don't have high elevations, but in other areas of the country, if you're in a mountainous area or you're up at the top of the mountain area, the pressure is going to cause condensation as well, or could. Yeah.
[00:08:16] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:08:16] Speaker A: Down here, it's more of a temperature play. So right now we are in early spring of the year, and last night it was rather cool.
[00:08:25] Speaker B: It was gorgeous.
[00:08:27] Speaker A: Yes, it was nice, but still, it was cool compared to the inside of at least my home. So when I woke up this morning and walked up to my windows, which I did, and I have aluminum frame windows in my home, there was condensation.
[00:08:40] Speaker B: On the frames, on the frames, and on the glass, or just the frames.
[00:08:43] Speaker A: It was more the frames today.
[00:08:44] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:08:44] Speaker A: Yeah. But it can be on the glass as well. It has to do with that temperature difference. There's nothing that anyone can do about it. Really. The only thing you can do is have the conversation about materials of your product. In this case, windows. I have aluminum windows, as I just mentioned. I could have considered something more like a vinyl product, a vinyl window. Well, the thermal difference between vinyl and aluminum. Vinyl is much better at thermal transmission. It reduces the thermal transmission.
[00:09:13] Speaker B: Right.
[00:09:13] Speaker A: So there's less chance or less odds of having any kind of condensation from a vinyl product as opposed to an aluminum product.
[00:09:23] Speaker B: We are sharing our expertise around all topics relating to the window and door industry. Whether you are a customer selling our products or a homeowner doing research, the Clear Impact podcast provides helpful content that makes an impact. Subscribe today wherever you listen to podcasts.
Okay. And we're going to have a conversation with Sean Martin about frame types. And we're Going to get into the nitty gritty around that too. So absolutely. If I had really old windows and they didn't have any condensation, and I just replaced my house with all new windows, now I do have condensation, how come the old ones didn't have that?
[00:10:02] Speaker A: That's a fantastic question. Well, my immediate response would be because your older windows that you replaced, your old windows were leaky.
They weren't as weather tight as the new products you just installed. Okay, so older windows, and this is true in older homes in general, you know, there's an old adage, what is a leaky home is a healthy home. You know, something like that. And there's some truth to that. But at the same time, the temperatures from the outside leaks to the inside if you don't have a weather tight home. And so you're spending more money on either air conditioning or heating your home, depending upon the season and what's going on. So you're used to accommodating that leakiness by increasing your expenditure on a monthly basis from your local power company.
[00:10:44] Speaker B: Gotcha.
[00:10:44] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:10:45] Speaker B: So that makes sense.
[00:10:46] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:10:46] Speaker B: So it's normal.
[00:10:47] Speaker A: It is.
[00:10:48] Speaker B: Okay, so our next topic, and this is a fun one. Distortion.
[00:10:53] Speaker A: Drumroll. Distortion.
[00:10:54] Speaker B: Yeah. So this is not a fun house where we want to have all kinds of waves and warps and weird things when we just got new windows and we have this gorgeous view and we want to see it. So is distortion normal?
[00:11:07] Speaker A: Distortion is normal. It is a manufactured issue that takes place with glass. And this is industry wide. And doesn't matter whether it's fenestration products for your home or glass for your automobile or glass for anything, it's a glass fundamental issue. Anytime you take a piece of glass, regardless of how large it is, anytime you take a piece of glass and you apply heat and pressure to it to make it stronger, that's the process we as a manufacturer go through to strengthen glass. We apply heat and pressure. And anytime we do that, the more times that we do that, the byproduct is distortion. So from a human perspective, distortion by definition is you look through a piece of glass, you look through your window, you look through a door frame, and you're looking at something that's completely vertical or near vertical. Maybe it's a palm tree out there in your wonderful yard. If that palm tree is not perfectly vertical as it should be, if you're seeing some waviness in it, that is distortion.
[00:12:10] Speaker B: Okay?
[00:12:10] Speaker A: And that's inherent in the glass, because the panel glass, you're looking through was strengthened by applying heat and pressure.
[00:12:16] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:12:17] Speaker A: So the first stage of strengthening is called heat strengthened glass. The second stage that we use is called tempered glass.
[00:12:25] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:12:26] Speaker A: So heat strengthened can have distortion. Tempered glass more than likely will. At some point in that structure of the glass, the frame of the glass will have distortion because it's happened twice.
[00:12:38] Speaker B: Oh, right.
[00:12:39] Speaker A: We applied heat and pressure two times to get tempered glass.
[00:12:42] Speaker B: Okay. So if you have like a laminated insulated unit and you have multiple pieces of glass, so does that just compound the amount of distortion that you see?
[00:12:52] Speaker A: Potentially? We as a manufacturer, we allow our consumers, our dealers in most cases, to be able to make up the glass packages they choose. There's certain limitations to that. But if you have a single piece of tempered glass, and if you have laminated insulated glass glass, you have three panes of glass, if what we call the cap, if the outer piece of glass is tempered and the others are just heat strengthen, then you're going to reduce the opportunity for distortion because it's not all tempered.
[00:13:20] Speaker B: Okay, gotcha. But that's normal.
[00:13:22] Speaker A: It is. It's a natural byproduct strengthening glass.
[00:13:25] Speaker B: Right. Which is what you want.
[00:13:26] Speaker A: It is what you want, but it can create distortion.
[00:13:29] Speaker B: And is there a certain way to look at things so that you can determine whether or not it's.
[00:13:35] Speaker A: You mean acceptable.
[00:13:36] Speaker B: Acceptable distortion? Yeah, yeah.
[00:13:38] Speaker A: There are certain rules of the trade that have been established through years of use because this is not a new phenomenon. You know, when you look through your piece of glass, when you look through your door or window, whatever we're talking about here, you know, you need to be normal about it. You know, the typical rules are you stand 10ft away from the glass, you look at it in a 90 degree so or perpendicular degree. You know, you're looking straight through the glass, you're not on an angle. There's just different things that are standard ways of doing it in the industry.
[00:14:07] Speaker B: Right.
[00:14:08] Speaker A: And we have those published in documentations.
[00:14:10] Speaker B: Awesome. Okay. And I have one more topic that we want to talk about and that is suction cup marks. So I know sometimes that can show up with condensation. Right. So our suction cup marks, I mean, obviously we're talking about in a lot of cases, really big pieces of glass, really heavy products that people can't be lifting. Right. It has to be done with a machine of some sort. And so sometimes that can leave a suction cup mark. What do we do with that?
[00:14:44] Speaker A: So you're right. It's typically you don't see suction cup marks. And again, painting with a broad brush. Typically, you don't see suction cup marks on window glass. Because it's small enough, it can be handled by a human. And we're not using robotic manipulators to do that. Suction cup marks are created by an air pressure situation where the suction cup and these are large. They're about 12 inches in a circle. And there will be multiple, depending upon the size of glass. The manipulator will adhere itself using air pressure, using the suction cups to the piece of glass. And then the operator can move that piece of glass, which may weigh 500 pounds, depending on the size, can move it safely and easily into the next process in order to move it into the frame. Well, because of the weight of that panel and because of the amount of pressure that the suction cups create, the suction cup can leave an invisible mark on that panel of glass. Now, we take every care there is to clean it to ensure that that's not taking place. We clean the suction cups periodically on the manipulators and so forth. So we take every due diligence. But there is still a situation. And again, this is not unique to us. It is an industry issue, but there are still situations where suction cup marks do happen. And there are different tricks of the trade, different solutions that people try, but it's simply an issue of that pressure that was needed in order to safely lift that piece of glass off the cart and to put it in the frame of the product. And sometimes, to your point on condensation, depending upon the temperature differential, once it's installed in your home, it'll be the temperature differential that will cause that to appear. It's just a ghost mark. So it typically will show up for 15, 20 minutes, and then it goes away, you know, as it equalizes in temperature. But it can cause questions from consumers, certainly.
[00:16:34] Speaker B: All right, is there anything else that we should talk about around concerns?
[00:16:38] Speaker A: I don't think so. I think this is a great list. I mean, these are fun topics, but they're real topics, and they're topics that we hear on occasion. It comes up from a training standpoint. We always talk about these topics so that our dealers, our dealers, employees, and potentially consumers in the future, they understand these different things that take place in the industry.
[00:16:57] Speaker B: Right. So if you're out shopping for impact glass and getting ready for the next season, or maybe you've gotten a bonus and you want to upgrade your house, knowing these things before you buy them will be helpful. And then it's not a complaint that you need to file.
[00:17:14] Speaker A: Yeah, it's great to be informed.
[00:17:16] Speaker B: Yes, absolutely. Well, Jim, I really appreciate your time. Thank you so much.
[00:17:21] Speaker A: Thank you.
[00:17:21] Speaker B: All right, have a great day. All right.
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