From the fabricator: Big news!

As you will read in e-glass weekly, our industry has won a pretty significant victory in the code world as the ASHRAE appeals panel has OVERTURNED the two most controversial and possibly damaging code items from ASHRAE 90.1-2010. Folks--plain and simple--this is a great moment for us as an industry.

The plan for reduction of the window-to-wall ratio and the new minimums for Visible Light/Solar Heat Gain have been rebuffed. The excitement is because our industry worked together with a common goal, and for the first time since we started this concerted process (I started in 2004), we have a victory. (We've even lost when we won votes at NFRC 49-6... so believe me to get a win like this is huge.)

The bottom line is we are stronger as an organized group than we are as individuals, and quite frankly, we are only trying to do what's sensible. No one is against energy efficiency; quite the opposite really. But we want to do it logically, without destroying our industry. This announcement surely starts that process. Congrats to Dr. Culp and the Aluminum Extruder Council, Urmilla Sowell and Bill Yanek of GANA, Marg Webb and IGMA, Guardian, AGC, and Pilkington for filing the appeals and fighting it to the end. Truly monumental!

Elsewhere...

• I was completely bummed to miss Solar Power International last week in LA. When I went last year it was an amazing show and people were so incredibly hopeful. So to those of you who went, any insight on the mood there would be great. Something tells me it wasn't as cheery as last year but probably still better than most shows have been.
• Best line of the week: the guy who said the housing market forecast was in various "shades of lousy"... Oh man, that line just hit it on the head. So if the housing market is "shades of lousy," the commercial building market must be shades of words that can't be typed on a family blog eh?
• Is there anything more frustrating than flying? Seriously? Last week I saw TSA make a big issue out of an iPad. The TSA agent said the iPad either had to ride alone in a bin OR stay in the guy's briefcase. Umm, I don't get that logic; do you? Well, when the guy complained, off to extra screening he went. 
• Then, on the plane--the packed, steamy hot plane--two rows ahead me (and shockingly not in my row) a young lady boarded late holding a child that had to be at least 1. She only had one seat: a middle seat. And so that row, even though the child was small (it sure wasn't a "baby" in my mind), had four people jammed in for three hours. Miserable. The thing I thought was that baby is bigger than a laptop, yet you can't hold a laptop on your lap for takeoff or touchdown....
• Look out Ashley Elementary, my son was passed the activist gene. Young Zach was elected to student council... I can't wait 'til he starts a blog railing about the new evil lunch procedure and how the lunch ladies just march in lockstep with the paraprofessionals working the floor. 
  
  Read on for links of the week...

Max Perilstein is chief marketing officer for Vitro America, Memphis. Write him at mperilstein@vitro.com.

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