A major focus for Fenestration Canada’s annual general meeting held this week in Mont Tremblant, Quebec, was planning for the revitalized WinDoor North America trade show
Earlier this year show organizers announced that the event will be held in Montreal for the first time after a long run in Toronto. It is also under new management with Zzeem Inc. taking over operations.
A major goal of the new WinDoor is to push exhibitors to bring new products. Attracting more machinery companies will be another big focus. Both are departures from the past.
“It’s important for people to realize it’s a new show,” said Stephane LaBelle of Groupe Eugenie, a member of Fenestration Canada’s WinDoor committee.
Other topics discussed included more engagement with dealers, contract glaziers and remodelers via educational programs.
Fenestration Canada and Zzeem also promise a much more robust website for the event. When it goes live in the next week or so, windoorshow.ca will feature extensive information about the show and an online registration form.
Changes to the WinDoor schedule include a possible pub crawl around Old Montreal after the show’s first day and a social event on the show floor after the close of the second day. It would be similar to those at major European trade shows such as Fensterbau, which feature live music and plenty of food and drink.
“We want everybody to stay together and network for as long as possible,” said LaBelle.
That spirit of staying close and socializing would extend to the planned educational sessions, which organizers hope to schedule earlier in the day to encourage attendees to hang around the exhibition hall and visit more booths.
Earlier, Fenestration Canada’s membership committee met to discuss ways to attract more small and mid-sized fabricators to the organization.
Geography is an issue. Canada’s huge size might be preventing a lot of companies from participating. But it’s also a plus. As one attendee noted, “you can talk to a fabricator who’s 3,000 kilometers away, somebody you’ll never compete directly against, and you can learn what they do.”
Day 2: Educational Sessions
The second day of the Fenestration Canada annual general meeting kicked off with a cross-country overview of building and energy code changes. Jeff Baker, the technical consultant for Fenestration Canada, walked attendees through updates to the North American Fenestration Standard (NAFS-11) and Energy Star.
Baker said NAFS is now in use in all Canadian provinces except Prince Edward Island and Nunavut. British Columbia is strong in NAFS enforcement, Baker said, while Quebec’s enforcement is limited. Most provinces fall somewhere in between.
British Columbia, Ontario and Quebec have unique provincial energy codes, Baker said. In British Columbia, the standard is tied to U-factor only, while Quebec uses a combination of U-factor and Energy Ratings (ER), a Canadian energy-efficiency metric defined in the CSA A440.2‐09 Fenestration Energy Performance standard. It’s a single number rating that evaluates the energy performance under winter heating conditions and factors in the balance between heat loss through thermal transmittance and air leakage, and solar heat gain through the door or window. Everywhere else in Canada uses either u-factor or ER.
In 2017, Ontario is looking to update its provincial code to match NAFS-11 and the Canadian supplement to that standard.
Baker said Canada’s National Energy Act has provisions that created some chaos in the market. For example, windows made outside of Canada must meet the requirements of the act, but windows made in Ontario and shipped in Ontario don’t. However, a window made in Alberta and shipped to Ontario would have to meet the requirements.
He also discussed Ontario’s five-year climate-change action plan that sets stricter carbon standards for new buildings. “The key phrase here is ‘zero carbon emission small buildings,’” Baker said. “To cut through everything, it means triple-glazed windows will be standard in Ontario.”
As far as Energy Star, Baker said there are no significant changes on the horizon. Something that is changing, however, is the Canadian Supplement to NAFS and the Performance Calculator. The most recent update came with higher wind load and water-infiltration requirements. Last fall, it was reviewed and revised, and now it’s closer to previous values.
Later, Heather Knudsen of the Canadian Centre for Housing Technology (CCHT) gave a presentation about a study her organization conducted on dynamic windows. It found energy savings of about 13 percent from dynamic glazing, but the payback periods are long, ranging from 13 to 27 years. (That’s expected to go down in the future, Knudsen said.) The study also found that dynamic glazing can reduce peak demand in winter by about 17-27 percent and in summer by 9-12 percent.
Other educational sessions included a presentation on social-media practices from Stephane LaBelle of Groupe Eugenie and a discussion of legal obligations to consumers with attorney Bruno Marcoux.
On Friday night, Fenestration Canada was scheduled to host the Presidents Dinner and the C.P. Loewen Awards presentation.