Date: 15 December 2011
J., December 12, 2011 – Glass fabricator J.E. Berkowitz, LP, Pedricktown, N.J., announced the completion of the first commercial center-city building with RENOVATE BY BERKOWITZ(TM), LLC (RbB) system at 400 Market Street in Philadelphia.
The revolutionary on-site window retrofitting system converts existing single-pane windows into energy-saving, triple-glazed insulating glass units (IGUs), and costs about 50 percent less than ripping out and replacing old windows with new ones.
Carolyn Pfeiffer, property manager for Kaiserman Company, which owns 400 Market Street, said the investment in the RENOVATE system is already paying dividends, not just in terms of cost and energy savings, but in tenant goodwill.
“According to calculations made with the U.S. Department of Energy’s eQUEST(R) energy simulation program, we anticipate that the RENOVATE system will help produce significant energy savings,” she explains. “Even without the energy savings, we’ve received positive feedback from our tenants, who are universally pleased with how much quieter and more comfortable the building is. The installation team worked with our tenants to minimize the disruption of the workplace, which not only made our tenants happy, but saved us the time and cost of relocating them as well.”
Arthur Berkowitz, president of J.E. Berkowitz, the company that developed the RENOVATE system, said 400 Market Street – a 12-story building built in 1972 – perfectly fits the profile of hundreds of 30- to 60-year-old buildings throughout the Northeast and Midwest that need to be reglazed for aesthetic, environmental and practical reasons.
“With the difficult economy and the high cost of maintaining older buildings, few owners are in a position to finance traditional reglazing projects, particularly when they consider the supplemental costs of temporarily relocating tenants and remediating the building after exposure to the elements,” he said.
“RENOVATE is the first reglazing system to adequately address those concerns because it simply takes a building’s existing windows and makes them more energy-efficient, improved noise reduction and more attractive. That means tenants can stay in their workspaces and the building remains completely enclosed throughout the project.”
Berkowitz added that the retrofit project with the RENOVATE system took about 50 working days for this 12-story building, compared to a schedule of two to three times as long for a traditional “rip-out-and-replace” project.
Because of its potential to increase energy savings in North America’s aging commercial building stock, RENOVATE has earned a grant from the U.S. Department of Energy, which is monitoring energy use at 400 Market Street and comparing it to past performance and modeled, pre-project projections.
The RENOVATE Platinum Plus system features CRADLE-TO-CRADLE(R) certified lites of SOLARBAN(R) 60 solar control, low-emissivity (low-e) glass and SUNGATE(R) 500 passive, low-e glass by PPG, separated by an argon-gas-filled cavity and a specially developed “desiccated” spacer system that “hermetically” seals the new IGU to the existing glass, for a permanent, no- maintenance attachment.
For more information about the RENOVATE by Berkowitz system, visit www.jeberkowitz.com/Renovate.
About JEB
JE Berkowitz, LP is a leading architectural glass fabricator. Founded in 1920, the ISO 9001 certified company serves customers for the domestic and overseas architectural markets. Products include Tempered Glass, Insulating Glass, Spandrel Glass, Silk-Screened Glass, Glass Doors and Entrances, Laminated Glass, and Point Supported Canopy and Wall Systems. The family-owned glass business is located in Pedricktown,, N.J., with over 200,000 square feet of plant space and 250 employees. For more information, visit www.jeberkowitz.com.
Renovate by Berkowitz (RbB) is a trademark of RbB, LLC.
Cradle to Cradle is a registered trademark and Cradle to Cradle Certified is a certification mark of MBDC, LLC.
Solarban and Sungate are registered trademarks of PPG Industries Ohio, Inc.
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