Is This Killer View Going to Kill Me?

April 6, 2022 3:24 PM

I live on the top floor of a high-rise, facing north and west. That entire NW wall of my apartment consists of two floor-to-ceiling fixed glass panels and one floor-to-ceiling sliding glass door. We're having insane winds here, and for the second time in the past few months you can SEE the glass bowing in, the door shifting, and it makes a ton of noise. The cat has taken to hiding in the bathtub. Should I join her?

I had maintenance come up and the guy said "Oh, these are rated for 130 mph" but who knows if he knows what he's talking about? Is this ... normal? I've lived in high rises with strong winds before, but always in a less-exposed location. Is there anything I can do to reassure myself that these 50-year-old giant single panes of glass are actually secure in 90 mph winds? They're drafty af, I can tell you that. Many thanks!

posted by 2soxy4mypuppet to Home & Garden (10 answers total)

Good news bad news. They almost certainly won’t shatter, they have got to be heat treated somehow. But they could, theoretically, come out of the frame as a whole pane of glass.
posted by hwyengr at 3:53 PM on April 6, 2022 [3 favorites]

It’s a little surprising they’re not bowing out, because the Bernoulli effect reduces pressure on the side where the fluid is moving.

Which means that the wind is sucking air out of the building somehow. It could be through cracks and gaps in your unit, since you say it’s drafty, or it could be through the ventilation system.

You might be able to to close or cover the inlets and outlets of your HVAC system and reduce the pressure differential if it’s the latter.

You might also try opening the glass door slightly to let air in in order to reduce the pressure differential.
posted by jamjam at 3:53 PM on April 6, 2022 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: I actually had the door slight cracked during the last (worse) winds, which is when you could really see the bowing in. Last night I could see them ... rippling. It's them coming out of the frame that I'm most afraid of ... and I don't know how to have someone actually verify that the frame/glass is secure.
posted by 2soxy4mypuppet at 3:58 PM on April 6, 2022

Think about it this way, in the last 50 years they've probable faced just as strong winds before and have survived.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 4:34 PM on April 6, 2022 [9 favorites]

The building would probably have filed plans with the city. This is a potential safety issue; your city has building inspectors who know about safety. Get some video clips. Make some calls. Of course you're freaked out. It's worth getting information from experts. You'll likely learn that they're actually rated for n mph winds, and you can relax.
posted by theora55 at 4:37 PM on April 6, 2022 [6 favorites]

That glass is designed to flex that way. Because if it couldn't flex, its response to wind pressure would have to be to break. Think of a living tree twig — when the window blows, it bends. But a dead twig usually loses that flexibility, becomes rigid, and therefore breaks off when the wind blows sufficiently. In the case of a tree this helps to clear out the dead parts. But it also illustrates the importance of flexibility.

If the noise is due to the door rattling or air blowing through the gaps around its edge, that needs to be addressed with weatherstripping and tightening. Other than that, the more the wind blows up there, the noisier it's going to be.
posted by beagle at 4:56 PM on April 6, 2022 [15 favorites]

Response by poster: Thanks, beagle, that information does make me feel better. There are obvious aftermarket screw holes (some with screws, some without that have been caulked) in many places around the frame, and a piece of the frame actually came loose and fell out (onto the balcony) earlier this year. (They screwed it in.) Time to raise hell (politely) with maintenance again, and hope that they don't raise my rent more than their usual egregious annual increase.
posted by 2soxy4mypuppet at 8:03 PM on April 6, 2022

When you raise hell (politely) do it in writing and CC an attorney or at least a family member. That will help make the consequences of failure to act clearer to them.
posted by Winnie the Proust at 8:53 AM on April 7, 2022 [1 favorite]

Think about it this way, in the last 50 years they've probable faced just as strong winds before and have survived.

With the ongoing acceleration of climate change, weather patterns are getting more frequently erratic with even higher energy than any prior era. While there's the possibility that there has been a few more intense specific incidences over the history of the building, the consistently increasing force over more recent years will be an entirely new problem.
posted by FatherDagon at 11:46 AM on April 7, 2022 [3 favorites]

In some places, high rises are required to have periodic facade inspections to ensure all the parts of the exterior are correctly attached. If you can find out if that's the case where you are, and maybe even the results, that might be reassuring.
posted by sepviva at 5:43 PM on April 9, 2022