So I've been waiting and waiting for some opportunity to come up where cheap high quality glass might pop into my world.
On the winter solstice, no less, after work I somewhat randomly went to a buddy's place and in our convoluted conversation he mentions that there happens to be some glass in Jasper Alberta (150km away: that's pretty
local around these woods) on the local 'Buy and
Sell' webpage, and they wanted the glass moved by Christmas. When I seemed interested he gave the details.
It was 16 panels of twin pane tempered glass in aluminum frames, 5' X 7' for $400 !!! He only wanted a few, so he hadn't seriously considered it. But we immediately called, and landed it, then the contractor wanted them gone the next day, then another guy wanted in on it and wanted half. We thought it was very doable and got on making our plans as three.
It was a bit of work to get them. We landed an extra guy, and so at first we thought we had 4 guys, and two 4X4 trucks. Then that guy that wanted half and had a truck dropped out. (my truck is not insured) Then our other helper dropped out. Then we found out the winter roads were atrocious. So we called the glass guy and told him that we couldn't possibly do it that day (22nd), but we would be able to arrange it the next day. So instead of finding a second truck, we decided we would rent a car hauler trailer for $100. I'm sure glad we did, as these panels were HEAVY and awkward (and getting them on the deck was Way easier than it would have been to get them in a truck box), and we had to get them out of this poolside hotel courtyard (the windows were for the indoor pool house) up a set of stairs with a metal railing in the middle of the stairs. We arranged that he use his truck/gas and rent the trailer, and I would buy the glass for us. (I'm also house sitting his place for two weeks in January, so he figured he owed me a favor and really wanted this glass to go to a good home <-what a
gift!).
Only two of the panels showed any glass damage.
My buddy and I managed to get one up to the
wood trailer deck on a layer of
cardboard, but we would be quite exhausted to do all 16. We got some tools out to unbolt the railing but the maintenance guy saw us and vetoed it. Then we called another buddy of ours that lives in Jasper. What a relief. All of the sudden, it started to smooth out the process.
We stacked them flat on top of each other with a single heavy ratchet strap looped underneath to hold them all as a single unit once the stack was complete. NOTE:( I would never lay them flat like that with non tempered glass, but this and the fact that the aluminum frames were beefy made us not even think at all about building an A-frame to do it on edge... laying it flat was the way to go). Then we wrapped the whole thing with cardboard, horse blankets, put two 3X10 rough cut boards on top, tarped it up, and strapped them to the deck with 5 ratchet straps. It was time for Burgers and a short hasty Christmas shop. I called dad and had him snow-blow 50 feet or so of my property driveway so that I could put the glass beside/against my school bus. We called a couple friends to help unload it.
It was a smooth as glass in the end. pun intended.
I'm just so super exited to finally have the glass on my property, I just had to share the story.
I also wanted to add that often it really pays off to wait for things to come up. I was getting frustrated, but I'm sure glad I didn't start on the process of looking to purchase glass. How expensive would that have been? Yikes!
The other thing that I wanted to add was that my buddy and I are both the kind of guys who are always doing things for other people when they called or asked, and when it came to make those calls, the other guys at the home end (both of whom I had helped a lot in the past) came to help, and my buddy had helped the other guy in Jasper before. What goes around, comes around.
The glass will serve as the South wall of my
Greenhouse, and eventually the South wall of my house.
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(For those that do not know, locomotive glass is bullet proof to protect the conductor and engineer). Not sure which department you are in, but maybe you could get some of those broken locomotive windows?
