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CE marking for insulating glass is now just around the corner, and the standard EN 1279 has been approved in full at EC level and implemented by the single member states. We now await official publication, scheduled for March 2006, which will set off the so-called “coexistence period” (12 months), after which it will no longer be possible to produce insulating glass without the requirements laid down by the standard.
Here again are the producer’s basic obligations:
· characterise the product through the so-called “system description” (EN 1279-1);
· demonstrate compliance of the product with the standard requirements of permeability to moisture and gas (type testing, EN 1279-2 and EN 1279-3);
· define and implement a system for periodical checks on production in accordance with EN 1279-6.
Alongside daily checks on incoming raw materials, checks during production and those on the finished product, the latter also involves the so-called periodical tests for ascertaining the efficacy of the whole system and the constant maintaining of product performances through:
· visual check on compliance of the product to the original system description;
· check on the permeability to moisture through a so-called short climatic test (lasting three weeks);
· check on permeability to gas through a test on a sealant membrane;
· check on the concentrations of individual gases and their mixtures.
The frequency of these tests will initially be half yearly and later annual when the producer has successfully passed four consecutive sets of periodical tests. They have to be carried out even when a fundamental component of the product (e.g. the sealant) is to be changed.
While the initial type tests must necessarily be conducted by notified laboratories, the periodical tests are left to the responsibility of the producer, who is free to perform them in house should adequate equipment be available and/or commission them from a trusted third party.
Thanks to this major opportunity and given the costs of the instruments required (difficult to rationalise for the individual producer), Fenzi S.p.A. has decided to invest new resources to offer its customers a specialist assistance service for carrying out these tests. A new climatic chamber was recently brought into operation, designed to test permeabili
ty to moisture and able to hold more than one hundred samples at a time, thus guaranteeing the service for approximately 300 customers who may request it.
