Tested to Last

Behind me is the air, water structural chamber. This area tests for air, water and structural performance — all three in one. There's a separate set of conditions for each of the three tasks.

The structural performance is testing for positive and negative wind loads.

The positive wind load is when the wind is blowing, creating a force on the window into the home. A negative wind load can occur when the wind is blowing across the window and when the wind wraps around the corner of a building, creating a force.

Here we are at the thermal test. We have an infrared camera that's pointing at a window behind me here and it's producing a thermal image on a monitor. What this is doing is showing you visually the efficiency of this window.

Now, you'll see at the top sash is a dark blue color, almost black, whereas the bottom sash is a lighter green to a yellow color.

These two sash have different pieces of glass in them. The top one has two panes of glass with no Low-E coating and no argon gas. The bottom sash has two panes of glass. It also has a Low-E coating and argon gas.

The argon gas will actually help slow down the convection currents. Low-E coating, which is a thin reflective coating applied to the surface of the glass, is engineered to minimize the amount of ultraviolet and infrared light that can pass through the glass — while maximizing the amount of visible light that's transmitted. This helps keep your home cooler in the summer and warmer in the winter.

This is the Pella hurricane test where we fire a 2x4 at 50 feet per second towards the window.

The window has laminated glass that's going to help protect the home from flying debris during a hurricane. The window and laminate needs to remain intact during hurricane to avoid a large rush of air from entering the home. If a large rush of air pressurizes the home during a hurricane, the pressure can lift the roof off of the home and the walls can blow over.

The other thing we do is after the impact of the 2x4, we'll cycle the window 9,000 times at hurricane pressures to help ensure that if flying debris does impact the window, and an experience is positive and negative wind pressure from a hurricane, the window will remain intact.

Behind me you will see the Pella patent wall. This is a testament to Pella's innovation throughout the 92 year company history.

We have over 150 patents on this wall - and are adding more each year. The founder of the company has his name on many of these patents, as well as the son after him. There are patents for the Rolscreen, aluminum cladding and many others.

There is a history of innovation at Pella Corporation, which continues to be a core part of our culture.

Here we are in the cycle test area of Pella Corporation. See this sliding door back here? It's going to go a 100,000 cycles.

We test air and water performance of the door before - and after - to understand the performance of the product before and after cycle testing.

The other thing we do is we go above and beyond the industry standard. Our double-hung windows will cycle 6,000 times. The industry standard is 4,000. Our casement windows cycle with 10,000 times where the industry standard is 8,000. We want to see how well the product will hold up after it is repeatedly opened and closed.

We'll also cycle test the components the customer is going to interact with like screens, shades and locks.

Behind me we have the insulating glass testing area.

The chambers behind me will test to 140 degree temperature with 100 percent humidity. They take the insulating glass out of there and put it into another chamber that will expose it to ultraviolet radiation which simulates the sunlight.

Once we pull them out of the simulated sun, we'll put them back into the high heat and humidity chambers.

This whole testing is done to make sure that these sealants perform as is intended.

When it comes to our wood windows and patio doors, our goal is for the wood to have long-lasting performance.

One way we test wood preservatives is by testing the wood with fungus and bags of dirt for accelerated screening tests. So, we'll buy fungus from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, cultivate it and grow it — and put it into a bag of dirt with our wood sample. Then, we leave it in there for a duration of time.

Performance is measured in this accelerated test by calculating weight loss at the end of the test. So, weight of the sample before testing compared to the weight after testing.

In addition to the screening test, we want to see how the wood preservative performs in the field, so we perform testing in South Florida. We have test houses in South Florida where we cut the sealant out of the window, to create an accelerated condition, and let water soak into the wood. So, it is a forced fail condition. We monitor the condition of the wood over time and assess the wood for any signs of degradation.

We want to see how our wood preservative performs in these conditions to continue to improve our performance for wood durability.

This is the environmental area of the test lab. And when I say environmental, I mean accelerated environmental.

We test samples in extra harsh conditions to evaluate materials and their performance in these accelerated conditions. We have chambers that accelerate corrosion that occurs in a seacoast environment. We also have ultraviolet chambers to accelerate the sun exposure. We perform testing at a test site near Daytona Beach, Florida, where we leave samples exposed to the environmental conditions to test for corrosion in the field.

These two components came out of the accelerated sun exposure testing. They came from two different suppliers. One of them turned yellow, while the other one stayed white. So, we obviously wouldn't want to use the one that turned yellow.

The lab and field testing help us make decisions to deliver long-term performance.