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Glass falling from downtown highrises

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Whats up with all this.:confused:

Another street in Toronto has been shut down after yet another piece of glass fell from a downtown highrise building Tuesday night.

A large chunk of glass from the Festival Tower, the condominium above the new TIFF Lightbox, crashed on John St around 7:40 p.m., leaving the road closed between Adelaide St. W. and King St. W. as police and city building inspectors investigate.

It was the second incident of falling glass in two days. On Monday, at least two separate panes of glass exploded on the upper balconies of a condominium near Bay and College Sts. and shards fell to the street below.

No one has been hurt by falling glass, and no one knows why shards of glass continue to fall. The Bay and College building’s owner doesn’t have an answer, the city’s building inspectors are confounded and residents are baffled.

Glass partitions from the building’s north side balconies crashed to the ground Monday morning, littering Bay and Grosvenor Sts. At least eight partitions have fallen from 37 Grosvenor St. on four different days since December.

After the last incident on July 21, where two panes of glass plummeted to the ground, the city deemed the building unsafe. The city previously ordered the developer to fix the affected balconies.

“To my knowledge, we’ve never ordered a building to replace glass from every single balcony,†said Jim Laughlin, a senior official with Toronto Building. “But this had to be done because we don’t know why this is happening.â€
More....http://www.thestar.com/news/article/1033940--glass-falls-from-another-downtown-highrise

Fear of falling highrise glass closes two Toronto streets
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news...ss-closes-two-toronto-streets/article2118045/
 
My friend works at Daniel's who built TIFF. Looks like it will end up as a pretty hefty redo for the balcony windows which from what I hear used tempered glass that explodes when overheated (south facing). The Murano issue could be more a problem of the installation by a contractor (now out of business) who did a shoddy job vs its sister building done by a different contractor. The City is rushing permits and developers are rushing to complete to move on to the next Condo. Quality is suffering.
 
Glass window problems in a skyscraper...there is precedent to this in Boston...

AG: After reading this it brings to mind the problems that the John Hancock Tower in Boston had after it was built in the 1970s...

This building had a problem with the windows breaking and falling and it was discovered that the glass had a similar flaw to what you described...

I believe the problem was corrected when the windows in the entire building had to be replaced...and the cost was substantial but if someone had been hurt or killed who knows what a potential lawsuit may have cost...

LI MIKE
 
By design, tempered glass is intended to shatter into millions of blunt pieces when exposed to too much stress. Tempered glass is specifically chosen (if not mandated by the building code) because when breakage does occur, it will be thousands of pea sized fragments that rain down onto the sidewalk, not 100 pound panes of glass which will kill on impact.

I suspect that the issue is not with the glass, but either with installation as has already been pointed out, or the selection of an unsuitable framing system to retain the glass. If the frame is unable to handle normal thermal expansion, or perhaps touches the glass directly without the protection of a soft rubber gasket, that will easily impose enough stress to cause the glass to shatter.

It is still possible that the glass itself is defective, however don't be alarmed by the 'explosion' that people are describing. Perhaps the glass was not cooled properly, and is therefore prone to breakage when a lesser amount of force is applied to it.
 
i saw on City TV that there's another building at Front / Blue Jays Way that also has similar issues. wonder which condo that is?

the occupant said it's been 4 months and nothing has been done to correct the matter.
 
More info..regarding the quality and more falling glass in other cities.

Shattered glass: what causes panes to fall off buildings

Two engineers explain what could be behind recent incidents in Toronto, Montreal, Austin


Two instances of glass falling off highrise buildings in Toronto this week have people wondering whether it's pure coincidence or a sign of some pervasive construction flaw.

Similar incidents have occurred at a highrise hotel and residence complex in Austin, Texas, and at the Quebec provincial library in Montreal.
More.....http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/story/2011/08/03/f-falling-glass.html
 
i saw on City TV that there's another building at Front / Blue Jays Way that also has similar issues. wonder which condo that is?

the occupant said it's been 4 months and nothing has been done to correct the matter.

Thats Matrix @ Cityplace. Its not a similar issue though. All of the balconies at Matrix have been sealed to prevent entry from within units because the railings were not installed properly. The issue has nothing to do with the glass. The problem is that the supports for the railing were not bolted properly to the concrete, and have been coming loose.

All of the balconies were inspected, and defective railings were removed. You can see many balconies are wide open with no railing if you look from the street. The work is ongoing.
 
More falling glass in Toronto: Woman hit on Bay St. today

http://www.thestar.com/news/crime/a...ng-glass-in-toronto-woman-hit-on-bay-st-today

Shards of glass littered Bay St. after a glass pane from a downtown highrise condominium fell and shattered, injuring at least one person late Monday morning.

Experts, concerned for public safety, are still trying to get to the root of the problem.

“We don’t know why it’s happening, and continues to happen,†said Jim Laughlin, deputy chief building inspector for the city of Toronto.

The city has ordered condo developer Lanterra to set up overhead protection for the Bay St. and Grenville St. sides. It’s already in place on the Grosvenor St. side because of previous problems this year.

Police received a report around 11:45 a.m. that glass had fallen from the south tower on the north side of Bay at Grenville.

One woman, who had reportedly been across the street on the intersection’s northwest corner, was treated for a cut to her wrist, and a small amount of blood was visible on the sidewalk. Eyewitnesses said the glass fell from a balcony about 29 floors up.

The curbside lane of Bay St. has been blocked by police and part of Grenville St. is also closed.

This is just the latest in a series of falling glass scares in the city. At least one resident, Noreen Hayashi said she would be changing her route from now on.

“I’ve got to think about walking around this building now. It’s going to be hard when I have to meet people at a nearby building for work,†she said.

This may be the first time that glass has fallen from the south tower, but glass has fallen from the north tower in the past. About eight panes of glass have fallen from the Grosvenor St. highrise in at least four other instances since last December.

On Saturday, Bedford Rd. in the Annex was closed for a number of hours after glass from a 32nd floor balcony smashed outside a condominium. The buildings are linked to the same building developer, Lanterra.

And glass from the posh condominium building over the TIFF Bell Lightbox has fallen at least twice this month onto John St., shattering over the road.

A city engineer is attending the Grenville St. condo later Monday to inspect the balcony, Laughlin said. Other safety orders may depend on those findings.
 
Lanterra is the developer with most of these issues. Shoddy construction. All smoke and broken windows. :confused: City engineers better scrutinize what is going up more diligently. All is see is glass from my condo in the sky. Albeit better built. Or at least I hope.
 
Toronto condo developer to replace balcony glass

The Toronto condominium developer at the centre of a controversy over glass falling on the city's streets, has announced it is replacing all of the glass in the balconies of three of its buildings.

The buildings, all in downtown Toronto, will have the existing tempered glass used in their balconies replaced with laminated glass.

The company, Lanterra Developments, said in a statement the new glass "loosely resembles the type of safety glass utilized in automobile windshields. The advantage of utilizing laminated glass is that in combination with using the latest available railing technologies, these laminated panels retain their structure in the event of a fracture and stay in place on the balcony should any breakage occur."

On three separate occasions since Saturday, glass fell from condo towers built by Lanterra.

A condo near Bloor Street West and Bedford Road, lost glass on two occasions.

In the third incident a tower on Grosvenor Street also lost a pane of glass. A woman walking along Bay Street was slightly injured in that incident.

Earlier in the year a condominium on Grosvenor Street and another on Grenville Street lost panes of glass from their balconies.

Since the weekend the condo at 1 Bedford Road has been blocked off by police tape and at workers are erecting "protective hoarding at all locations to continually ensure the safety of pedestrians and vehicles in proximity to the buildings," the company said.

Lanterra also said that effective immediately all of its construction projects will use laminated instead of tempered glass

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/story/2011/08/17/toronto-condo-glass.html

http://www.cp24.com/servlet/an/local/CTVNews/20110817/110817_glass/20110817/?hub=CP24Home
 
Gee, looks like someone is going to get sued

Woman struck by falling construction material at city building

A woman was rushed to hospital after she was struck in the head by a piece of building material that fell from a city-owned office in downtown Toronto, the latest in a spate of broken glass and other objects falling from the city’s high-rise buildings.

The woman was walking near 277 Victoria St., near Dundas Street East, around 1:45 p.m. Friday when she was hit with a piece of styrofoam covered in plaster, Ministry of Labour spokesman William Lin said. The building is owned by the city and houses the Toronto Public Health offices. It was undergoing exterior renovations at the time.

The woman, reported to be in her 30s, was rushed to nearby St. Michael’s Hospital with a cut to her head.

Police roped off the construction site for the Ministry of Labour to investigate.

According to public records, the city awarded a $726,000 contract in June for “exterior cladding remediation” on the building to Phoenix Restoration

http://news.nationalpost.com/2011/0...lling-construction-material-at-city-building/
 
I noticed a few condos on the Queens Quay were missing balcony glass.

There is even a building in City Place that is missing a window
 
All the new buildings around Regent Park now have barriers and protective hoarding. You can't walk anywhere near a building, including the front of Tim Horton's.
 

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