Austell, GA — In the past year YKK AP America has released window and shade products that can improve the energy efficiency of buildings, and with plans of launching even more-efficient products in the coming month, the company has created a line to lump all of its green items together.
The company's new enerGfacade family line includes its Luminance, ThermaShade and YOW350T products. ThermaShade (below) is an exterior sunshade system that helps reduce solar heat gain. The Luminance system (above) is an interior shelf system that directs daylight further into interior spaces.
The YOW350T is a window system that allows for triple glazing and placing blinds between window panes. The system can help provide buildings with a low U-value, which is the measurement of how well a window provides heat insulation. A lower U-value means a window does a better job keeping heat in when it's cold outside and keeping heat out of the building when it's hot outside.
"What (the enerGfacade line) does is it communicates to the design world that we have a highly energy-efficient package that you can use to design a building facade with," said Mike Turner, YKK AP America's vice president of marketing.
"How do designers go and choose the right products to meet their goals?” Turner said, "With this enerGfacade product line, architects know where to go. They don't have to filter through lots of different product lines to get what they need."
The company plans to add to the enerGfacade soon, and launched the family line in anticipation of the upcoming Greenbuild conference.
"We are going to be introducing some new technology in the United States that is going to bring the threshold of the U-value for a commercial window system to a level not yet seen in the domestic market," said Oliver Stepe, senior vice president for YKK AP America.
YKK AP America is the U.S. arm of YKK AP, a global manufacturer of architectural products with annual sales of about $3 billion, and both are part of the YKK Group, a $6 billion company that also produces zippers and other fastening products.