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Please help, reflective window question


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Hiya all, total noob here...

 

I have a serious problem. I just finished building my villa in Thailand, where climate is hot, especially during day and we often use air-conditioning indoors. It never gets very cold during the entire year. To save some energy cost, I decided to use single-pane, reflective and tempered low-e windows with mirror coating on one of the two surfaces. I know, double-pane would have been much better but I couldn't afford it. I used similar glass in Hong Kong before and was quite happy with the result; not only did the room get less hot, but the mirror effect also increased privacy during the day.

 

In Hong Kong, they installed the reflective mirror-coating towards the outside of the building. Logically, this makes sense to me, because the reflective coating not only reflects some of the UV and heat radiation, but also protects the privacy during the day.

 

Therefore, when I ordered the reflective glass in Thailand, I specifically requested the coating to be towards the outside as well.

However, when they finally delivered and installed the glass panels, the coating ended up towards the inside.

The problem is, that I have a lot of triangle windows, which cannot be turned. I immediately told the contractor that the windows have been installed the wrong way and initially they agreed. He even changed some of the rectangular panels to see the difference between coating facing in and coating facing out:

 

(apparently I'm not allowed to post pictures, you can have a look here: https : //photos-6.dropbox.com/t/2/AADm6dg2aIp-qMlQico4fljj31qGKwXGNujbQE8tqBtT1g/12/7566189/jpeg/32x32/1/_/1/2/IMG_20160801_150003_PerfectlyClear.jpg/EKiozwUYtZ0FIAIoAg/URv6fiJJ8Yt_D4LxLLpJ-g8uCUlwVoUK80TaXnYN9EY?size=1600x1200&size_mode=3

 

* The left side is how the panels were originally installed, coating facing in. The right side is after they turned the panels, coating out.

It seems very obvious to me that the right side is much better at privacy and reflecting UV/sunlight etc.

 

However, in the meantime, the contractor changed his mind and this is what he writes:
 

The coating MUST BE INSIDE ALWAYS AND EVERYWHERE,thats how it initially was done as per guidelines from the supplier,   there is no point in arguing about that regardless what we said in the past because we did what we did since we were all confused.

We spend days and days and lost a lot of money unnecessary because you told Dan to change the glass without any basic knowledge about glass technology ( proves from your statement ) and made everyone confused.

This has to stop and thats why i got the supplier here today and now we are 100% sure we did it correct from day one.

I hope you understand and respect the outcome because we delivered the glass exact as chosen by you and signed on the sample and installed it the correct way.

The conclusion is actually that there is only one thing inacceptable in this complete story and that is that you gave the order to our staff to do other things than we told them to do .
If that didnt happened we didn't had to have this discussion now.

I hope i cleared the air with this and we can move forward.

 

The contractor is an Australian company, operating in Thailand. I chose them in order to prevent this kind of situations and misunderstandings. I agree with them that I am not a windows specialists and therefore I want to bring up this topic in this forum and ask you specialists who is right and who is wrong?

 

An added problem that I'm facing (quite literally) is that the glass is reflective from the inside during the night. You can't easily look outside during the night as all you see is a reflection of yourself. Would this be better if the coating is facing outwards?

 

Can some of you specialists please shed some light on this? I don't mind being wrong, but it just seems not logical to me that the reflective coating should be on the inside.

 

Thanks in advance for your help!

Best regards from sunny Thailand,

Marc

 

 

 

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Any reflective appearance to coated glass should face out (and the coating will be on the inside), anywhere and everywhere... accept in those cases where they misunderstand coated single pane. 

 

If it was a low visibility, little reflectivity, high performance coating, it should be on the inside.

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Any reflective appearance to coated glass should face out (and the coating will be on the inside), anywhere and everywhere... accept in those cases where they misunderstand coated single pane. 

 

If it was a low visibility, little reflectivity, high performance coating, it should be on the inside.

 

Hi Smartieshoes,

 

Thanks for your quick reply and please excuse my ignorance.

So you're saying the reflective appearance should face out and with coating inside?

 

I'm not sure if you had the chance to look at my picture: https://photos-6.dropbox.com/t/2/AADm6dg2aIp-qMlQico4fljj31qGKwXGNujbQE8tqBtT1g/12/7566189/jpeg/32x32/1/_/1/2/IMG_20160801_150003_PerfectlyClear.jpg/EKiozwUYtZ0FIAIoAg/URv6fiJJ8Yt_D4LxLLpJ-g8uCUlwVoUK80TaXnYN9EY?size=1600x1200&size_mode=3

 

The left side is quite obviously less reflective than the right side. But left side is coating inside, while right side is coating outside. So in my case it seems, the reflective appearance is higher with coating outside...

 

So I'm still confused about what's correct and what's not.

 

Thanks and best regards,

Marc

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Any reflective appearance to coated glass should face out (and the coating will be on the inside), anywhere and everywhere... accept in those cases where they misunderstand coated single pane. 

 

If it was a low visibility, little reflectivity, high performance coating, it should be on the inside.

 

Hi Smartieshoes,

 

Thanks for your quick reply and please excuse my ignorance.

So you're saying the reflective appearance should face out and with coating inside?

 

I'm not sure if you had the chance to look at my picture: https://photos-6.dropbox.com/t/2/AADm6dg2aIp-qMlQico4fljj31qGKwXGNujbQE8tqBtT1g/12/7566189/jpeg/32x32/1/_/1/2/IMG_20160801_150003_PerfectlyClear.jpg/EKiozwUYtZ0FIAIoAg/URv6fiJJ8Yt_D4LxLLpJ-g8uCUlwVoUK80TaXnYN9EY?size=1600x1200&size_mode=3

 

The left side is quite obviously less reflective than the right side. But left side is coating inside, while right side is coating outside. So in my case it seems, the reflective appearance is higher with coating outside...

 

So I'm still confused about what's correct and what's not.

 

Thanks and best regards,

Marc

 

Dont click on the above link, my security software warns me.

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