In 2006, about three years into the construction phase, it became necessary
to think about mundane things such as windows.
Following the basic tenets of recycle,
reuse, salvage etc., where would one find sufficient windows of necessary quality?
That
fall, Dean and his family were working as volunteers for the Illinois Department
of Natural Resources.
They were doing a controlled burn of invasive species in
the game preserve behind the farm.
Dean's current princess at the time (since
departed) was wearing a haz-mat suit and stood downwind of a poison ivy burn.
Several
days later she swelled up and looked like a cross between a cheese pizza and yesterday's
lunch.
She went to the hospital and received Cortisone shots and they suggested
she get some topical Cortisone cream from Walmart.
While she did that, Dean went
into Rural King. On the bulletin board was notice of an auction for radiators and
windows.
Dean disregarded it as it was crudely printed on an index card and likely
of little interest.
Getting home, he had this gnawing feeling and called Rural
King and asked them to read the phone number to him.
The next morning he called
an auction house in Marissa.
They told him they had auctioned the contents of
Marissa High School the week previously and forgot to auction the windows and radiators.
Upon
asking about the windows, he was told "They're aluminum." That was a Thursday.
Friday,
he drove down to check out the windows and found out they were 5/8ths inch institutional
argon-filled.
They were brand-new. they still had the paper on them. No student
had ever looked through them.
The school had been condemned for asbestos violations
and was to be torn down.
Saturday, he and Bill Boardman drove down to the auction
in his new Mazda.
Dean asked Bill how many window should he buy? Bill replied
"All of them." "Why?"
Bill replied because these wndows are
$1000 each.
The auction started. The auctioneer asked $25 per window. No takers.
The
auctioneer asked $20 per window. No takers.The auctioneer asked $15 per window. No
takers.
The auctioneer asked $10 per window. No takers. Dean offered $2 per window
and bought them all.
When they walked out, Dean saw that someone had shattered
his windshield.
This was a bad omen. He decided he better get these windows out
as quickly as possible. Why?
Because someone with a handful of rocks could do
$10,000 damage in ten minutes.
Also, Dean suspected there was some resentment
the windows had sold so cheaply to someone outside the community.
That said, he
worked day and night extracting and hauling windows and even enlisted the help of
his 83 year-old father.
While he was there, he asked the lady who had bought the
gymnasium floor if she had hard what people thought of him getting the windows.
Her
response? "Oh, they say you stole them."
By pure serendipity, there were virtually the exact number of windows of the
exact dimension necessary to do the building.
However, when installation began,
songbirds started flying into them and it was killing them.
Also, there was the
concern they might break a $1000 window.
Dean called Quaker Windows and Doors
and convinced them to send him adhesive decals they put on all their new windows.
They
put these decals on when they ship them for advertising and name recognition.
They'll
get some free advertising when Dean puts the decals on to protect the songbirds.
These are really incredible, robust windows. They are made for schools, so
obviously they are made to take some heavy mileage.
That makes them very appropriate
for an application like this where the building is expected to last a thousand years.