Duke Tower Kitchener | 39 fl | completed

[panamaniac]

And here we all thought that plastic sheeting would make an ideal spandrel panel ...

[Chris]

holy crap, I thought that was plastic or glass.

[ac3r]

That's a common issue with cheap materials. I know a lot of the first two floors of Grand River Hospital suffer from that. It has peeled and melted away over time. This is record speed, though.

[nms]

It's hard to tell from the picture, but it looks like the damaged plastic is inside the glass rather than outside. If I had to guess, these panels are mostly south-facing so get the maximum amount of sun.

[cherrypark]

It's hard to tell from the picture, but it looks like the damaged plastic is inside the glass rather than outside. If I had to guess, these panels are mostly south-facing so get the maximum amount of sun.

Yeah definitely the film backing delaminating from the glass. You can see the sections that haven't let go but are pulling up in the lighter grey streaks. Great failure mode; no way we could have tested for that one...

[Momo26]

LOL. Why is this not surprising

[neonjoe]

This reminds me how we had a south facing window on our house break because we had blackout curtains on during the day. It just got too hot and there was nowhere for the heat to dissipate inside. The vinyl frames on the window warped.

[tomh009]

That's a common issue with cheap materials. I know a lot of the first two floors of Grand River Hospital suffer from that. It has peeled and melted away over time. This is record speed, though.

What kind of material would that be? This is much newer than GRH!

[neonjoe]

It almost looks like they just vinyl wrapped the glass and called it a day.

[KevinL]

Yeah, whatever plastic was chosen did not have the correct thermal rating for the application. Someone cut a corner somewhere.

[Lens]

I laughed out loud when I saw that photo. Absolutely no surprise. The podium is shit. At least it took 10-20 years for city hall and grh to start looking bad and they don't even look THIS bad

[Spokes]

Just when you thought the podium couldn't get any worse

[ac3r]

That's a common issue with cheap materials. I know a lot of the first two floors of Grand River Hospital suffer from that. It has peeled and melted away over time. This is record speed, though.

What kind of material would that be? This is much newer than GRH!

Just some kind of synthetic polymer that is put against one side of the glass. It usually shouldn't peel...ever. Sometimes heat and humidity can cause it. But in this case I guess they just went with the dollar store version and this is the result.

[DK519]

Residents barred from Kitchener condo floor because of problem windows.

[skyrise32]

Residents barred from Kitchener condo floor because of problem windows.

Seems like a separate issue, actual broken glass in the guard above.
The peeling is cosmetic and should not stop any occupancy.