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As part of the project for regulatory harmonisation among EC member countries, the directive CE 89/106 lays down the compulsory nature of the CE mark also for all glass products.
As with other building products, the CE mark will allow free circulation of goods within member states and their sale on single national markets and will ensure that the stated performances do not alter significantly in time.
The production and sale of insulating glass is to be governed by the EN 1279 set of six standards which are to come into force following publication of Part 5, scheduled for the end of May. Nine months after publication of the latter, i.e. as from February 2006, the producers who fulfil all the requisites of the standards may use the CE marking; instead twenty-one months after the date of publication, i.e. from February 2007, producers who do not align with these requirements may no longer market their insulating glass. The role and responsibility of producers are clearly central throughout the process for achieving and maintaining conformity to the requisites of the standard, even when some activities are delegated to third parties.
Producers must specify the features of their products via the “system description”, demonstrate conformity of the glass to the requirements of the standard (EN 1279-2 and EN 1279-3) and carry out a systematic check on production (Quality Manual EN 1279-6).
For the system description the producers of insulating glass must give documented specification of the features of their products, describe all the characteristic components of the sealing, important for the performance of the final product, and demonstrate conformity of the product performances to the requisites of the standard (EN 1279-2 and EN 1279-3). Since there are no obligations regarding the choice of materials and relative quantities, the system description is totally at the discretion of producers.
The responsibilities assigned to producers of insulating glass include, finally, production control as defined by EN 1279-6, i.e. ongoing checks on correspondence of the product to the features declared by the producer in the system description, and hence its conformity to the requirements of the standard.
The time is now ripe and all producers should implement production control in accordance with EN 1279-6 as soon as possible within their companies. It is also very important to accumulate a large number of registrations of the samples inspected before tackling drafting of the system description in order to ensure its correspondence to actual daily production.
EN 1279 SET OF STANDARDS
EN 1279-1: generalities, dimensional tolerances and rules for the system description.
EN 1279-2: long term test method and requirements for moisture penetration.
EN 1279-3: long term test method and requirements for gas leakage rate and for gas concentration tolerances.
EN 1279-4: methods of test for the physical attributes of edge seals.
EN 1279-5: evaluation of conformity.
EN 1279-6: factory production control and periodic tests.
