| Glass Stops |
| We thought that we'd be doing this job right before Christmas. Because the framer chose to notch the microlam struts that hold the glass, there was some question as to whether they would be strong enough to hold the weight. The building department said that they would require a letter from an engineer to pass the framing inspection. So we shelled out the $150 for the engineer to come look and write a little letter. He said that it would be fine, but that we should add a few A35 anchors. No big deal. |
| Well, nothing can go quite that smoothly. When we went to put the anchors in, I measured the glass openings. Out of 17 windows, 3 of them were square. One of them was out of square by an inch and a half! We were furious. We contacted the framer, who was sure I had measured wrong, and he said that he'd be out the next weekend to fix it. The weekend came and went: no framer. We decided to find another framer and back charge the first fellow for the extra labor and materials. |
| While they were tearing apart the front face anyway, I had them get the window widths correct (remember that the first framer had made the openings too small and we'd have to get the glass custom cut?) which will save us a little money. All said and done the first framer notched the microlam struts, made the window openings too narrow, built the openings (way) out of square, framed the exterior doors too short, built an exterior wall over a void above a planter, didn't put solid blocking between the header and the trusses, and left off the hurricane clips and anchors. |
| As always, I take responsibility for this project and my own desicions, but this is all on the framer and, unfortunately, we may have to go to court to get our recompence. We'll see. Finally, after all of that we had square window openings and were ready to put glass stops in. The stops are just 1X6 cedar ripped to 4 3/8" to accomodate the glass and caulking. There were only two difficult parts of this job. First, finding enough good quality cedar 1X6 took 3 trips to two different lumber yards. Then, the weekend we chose to do it was FREEZING! We have a nifty gas cartridge nailer to use for just this type of job but it was so cold that the nailer wouldn't shoot. It made for a long day. |
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| This window measured 34 1/2" at the top and 36" at the bottom. (The board looks bent because it's two photographs) |
| Here we have a wall built right over open space. I wasn't on site when they decided to do this! |
| You can see the blocking between the trusses on the left. of this pic The same should have been done in the big open space too. |
| After the new framing, and because of the measurments of the old framing, we have these silly tiny spaces on the ends. I think that we will end up covering those with flashing rather than trying to squeeze in a little piece of glass. |
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| On the right you can see how the stops will hold the enormous sheets of glass. There is an inch and an eigth gap to take the 1" glass unit. |
| In order to provide good ventilation, Earthships have operable windows low on the front face and operable skylights high in the back of the rooms to get a natural convection. We've chosen to use a simple awning window which will cast less of a shadow than a dormer type window, which are shown in the plans and in the books. |
| "THE GLASS IS IN!" |
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