Pacific Tower retrofit recognized as the 1st secondary window upgrade project in the US to achieve 30%+ building shell performance improvement
LOUISVILLE, Colo., Oct. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ — Alpen High Performance Products (Alpen), the leading American manufacturer of high efficiency window technologies for commercial and residential markets, today announced a retrofit project, the Pacific Tower in Vancouver, WA, as a recipient of the Department of Energy’s 2023 Retro 30 Award. The Pacific Tower project achieved a 32 percent building envelope improvement (BEP) rating by installing Alpen’s WinSert Plus double pane secondary windows to the inside of the building’s existing single pane aluminum framed windows, which reduced the building’s total energy consumption by an average of 13.4 percent. By opting for secondary windows as opposed to full window replacements, the Pacific Tower retrofit project trimmed its costs by 89 percent.
Alpen Retrofit Window Project Receives Department of Energy’s Retro 30 Award
Alpen Retrofit Window Project Receives Department of Energy’s Retro 30 Award
“The Pacific Tower project is recognized as the first secondary window upgrade in the US to achieve a 30%+ building shell performance improvement, which is huge validation for our company’s WinSert product,” said Alpen CEO Brad Begin. “Although not considered a part of the award process, our team was even more pleased to know that the project was executed flawlessly in a fully occupied, four-story commercial building in just over a week, and at a fraction of the cost of full window replacement, with virtually no tenant disruption. Those are some of the intangibles we hear over and over in project after project that we believe makes the WinSert product line a game changer.”
The Retro 30 Award is given out annually by the Department of Energy in support of its Building Envelope Campaign (BEC) to BEC participants that have demonstrated the largest building envelope improvements with new or retrofit projects. According to the DOE website, the BEC campaign was first introduced in 2020 to enhance the agency’s ongoing efforts to develop, demonstrate, and accelerate the adoption of cost-effective, energy efficient building technologies. The BEC awards recognize these energy-saving success stories in the following categories:
The Novel 40 and Novel 20 awards recognize new construction envelope projects that achieve 40 percent and 20 percent building envelope performance improvement over code, respectively.
The Retro 50 and Retro 30 awards, which highlight retrofit projects that achieve 50 percent and 30 percent improvement, respectively, over code.
According to a federal research study, windows consume about 30 percent of all building heating and cooling energy, which in turn forces power plants and building furnaces to burn more fossil fuels. In terms of dollar figures, that amounts to losses of around $40 billion a year.
When full replacement is not an option as was the case with the Pacific Tower project – the bid for new replacement windows was $2.3 million – secondary windows are a credible alternative. The WinSert product line represents Alpen’s most recent innovation in the high-performance window category, incorporating thin glass technology with super-insulated fiberglass frames to provide affordable and effective window upgrade options for commercial buildings. The Pacific Tower retrofit project offers proof that Alpen’s WinSert solutions can dramatically improve a building’s envelope performance and radically reduce its energy costs at a fraction of the price for full window replacement.
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