-Manufacturer Supplies 792 Windows for New Building in Chelsea-
FLUSHING, NY, May 23, 2019 –Crystal Window &Door Systems, the award-winning national manufacturer, is playing a role in New York City’s efforts to solve its affordable housing crisis. One of the newest buildings in the DeBlasio Administration’s Housing New York Plan to construct or preserve 300,000 units of affordable housing during the period 2014 to 2026 is 425 West 18th Street, and Crystal Windows is proud to be the fenestration supplier for the exciting new building.
Located in the resurgent West Chelsea section of Manhattan, 425 West 18th Street is part of the existing adjacent New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) 1962-era Fulton Houses complex. The new 18-story building has 160 studio, 1-bedroom, and 2-bedroom rent-stabilized apartments set aside for different tiers of tenant income eligibility.
Energy efficient and sound attenuating Crystal Series 5600 and 5100 aluminum windows provide grand views for the new residential property at 425 West 18th Street in New York City
Crystal furnished the newly constructed building with 792 quality energy efficient aluminum framed windows. In most openings, the large windows were combined to provide apartments with dramatic 7’ to 8-½’ wide by 7’ tall nearly floor-to-ceiling vistas.
The Crystal heavy-commercial Series 5600 2- and 3-lite Aluminum Slider is the primary window used on the project. The thermally-broken 3-¼” jamb depth window is AW-PG40/PG50 AAMA rated and features a continuous full-height clip latch pull rail and stainless-steel sash rollers. Most of the building’s openings used large 85”, 90”, or 102” wide by 67” tall sizes of the Series 5600, and some openings used 3-lite sliders as wide as 120”. For this project, the sliding windows included Crystal’s optional metal sash stop devices to limit openings to 4”. In some instances, to maintain aesthetics, the sliding windows were specified with 2” wide exterior applied vertical grids.
The other window used at 425 West 18th Street was the Crystal Series 5100 Fixed Picture Aluminum Window with continuous head and sill to accommodate two or three individual lites. The Series 5100 is a thermally-broken 3-¼” jamb depth frame window which boasts an outstanding AW-PG100 AAMA rating. In most cases, this window’s continuous head and sill frame paired an insulated glass unit (IGU) with an HVAC PTAC louver.
Both windows feature 1” IGUs which were specially glazed for energy efficiency and to attenuate sound transmission into the apartments from the busyManhattan streets. All the double-glass IGUs used Guardian’s 3⁄16” Low-E SN68 product for the exterior glass and 5⁄16” clear laminated, or for large size sashes,9⁄16” clear laminated interior glass. For greater thermal performance, all IGUs were Argon filled.
Crystal supplied 323 apartment PTAC model AEL-42 Type 7116 louver units manufactured by Reliable Products, Inc. of Geneva, AL. Crystal sourced the louvers for the project and factory installed them into the Series 5100 window frames.
To facilitate the tall window configurations, Crystal stack mullions were used to vertically combine windows in the building openings. Several of the larger apartments used Crystal 90° corner mullions for fenestration configurations which wrapped around the building’s corner. A variety of Crystal installation clip, receptor, and subsill accessories were used for securing the windows to the building. All Crystal windows and exposed installed accessories were finished in a durable AAMA 2604 powder coat black color finish.
The 425 West 18th Street building is owned by NYCHA. Artimus Construction of Manhattan was the construction manager, and GernerKronick&Valcarel (GKV) Architects of Manhattan designed the striking building. Vista Skywall Systems of Flushing, NY was the fenestration installer.
