W Hotel Closed (windows, where to, liberal)

[atxcio]

Originally Posted by eepstein

There's a W hotel in Austin?? Downtown?? Dang, and up until now I thought the only one in the state was in Dallas.

Oh yeah, there is a smaller W Hotel in Dallas. Good point. Wonder if they have problems with the glass?

[SickOfCalifornia]

I won't be surprised if we find out someone is shooting these out. Video footage shows the tempered glass breaking, then falling. Short of impact, it shouldn't break like that. Heat does a lot of things to glass but shatter isn't one of them. It takes a dramatic and sudden temperature change to break glass. I bet police are already looking for a shooter with a pellet or low caliber rifle.

[cBach]

Why are they replacing the balcony glass with more glass? Shouldn't they put in iron railings?

That's why I don't trust these artsy fartsy nouveau hotels. Give me the Driskill anyday. Mortar and stone is always preferable to anything else.

I presume that northern engineers designed the hotel, they probably didn't consider the sun/heat factor in Austin.

[cBach]

What compass position did all the windows fall from? (from the the south or west would indicate heat loading issues)

What time of the day did the glass fall? (afternoon would indicate heat loading issue)

My advice is to replace all glass panels with metal.

[paul6835]

Heat makes things expand. Poorly designed bracketing will prevent that glass from expanding and it will buckle and eventually pop and shatter. This is just poor engineering, not a poor choice in materials - glass is on buildings in much hotter environments than Austin with much wilder swings in temperature without issue.

[janmc]

Originally Posted by SickOfCalifornia

I won't be surprised if we find out someone is shooting these out. Video footage shows the tempered glass breaking, then falling. Short of impact, it shouldn't break like that. Heat does a lot of things to glass but shatter isn't one of them. It takes a dramatic and sudden temperature change to break glass. I bet police are already looking for a shooter with a pellet or low caliber rifle.

Are you serious? Yeah there is a mad shooter out there taking out the windows at the W. Kinda silly.

[Spade]

Originally Posted by passionatearts

This sounds like it's going to be a litigation nightmare as well as a big blow to the burgeoning Downtown hotel business.

You think this will hurt the two proposed 1000 room hotels in downtown?

[buffettjr]

And yesterday someone died falling from the W at the White House.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2009885/Woman-falls-death-rooftop-balcony-White-House.html

As long as we're speculating people are shooting out windows at the W (lol) it makes you wonder if the W is the next target of some ingenious, coordinated terrorist campaign!

[jdevelop2]

Originally Posted by Spade

You think this will hurt the two proposed 1000 room hotels in downtown?

No. Why would it?

[Spade]

Originally Posted by jdevelop2

No. Why would it?

I didn't either. That's why I was asking him how it would be a big blow to the downtown hotel business.