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Does anyone have any knowledge of dessicant falling or pooling down in between the two panes of glass with intercept spacer? I know on the old discussion board I saw some questions with it. Oberon, did you say you had some ideas?

I have personally seen a lot of swiggle seal completely let loose of the glass and fall between the panes, but not the dessicant in Intercept. I'll be curious too if anyone has heard of it before and most of all if it was widespread, or maybe just one production batch that was made too soft or something. I know there are some pretty tight specs and temperatures a lot of these products have to maintain during manufacture to be able to perform properly, and like everything, human error is aways possible.

I have seen a couple of these issues. The low-e will also start to fail/discolor. The good ol swiggle seal, ol droopy.

Hey Earwax, I started one of those posts on the other board. I've ran across this a couple times. I discussed it with Oberon and we had a tough time figuring it out. So I ordered new glass and pulled the old one out. I found that the Dessicant used around the window was fine. The product used around the Argon fill hole was where it failed. Some how it broke down around the screw or pop rivet. The plug then failed and the silicone based product slimed its way in. I've also seen silicone based product seep into failed seals around the glass. This was part of that wild discussion of glass manufacturers using silicone to back the Super Spacer. Remember the Marketing Director from the Super Spacer manufacturer? That was a crazy one!!! I thought FenX was going to snap. But he stayed the fine gentleman he is and kept his cool.
I can't explain this phenomenon in any kind of professional terms as I'm sure the great Obi-One can. My only logical explanation is that it's a glass provider that didn't use the proper dessicant in the first place.
I've also come across painted or coated spacer flaking off on the inside of the glass. I've seen this a couple times.
What we should do is between W4U and myself. Save our glass finds in the field. Store them and when we get a couple hook up with Oberon and dissect these pieces. Since we are all in the Midwest region it may serve as quite the experiment. But then again he may have already done this a couple times. Hope this offers some kind of explanation.

Guy

This is an interesting topic. I am afraid I am a little bit in the dark as to what a desiccant is or does in the first place. I looked it up in the dictionary and it said it was a drying agent. Can anyone fill me in?

nailbiter,

Desiccant is indeed a drying agent. It is placd inside the IGU space to absorb moisture between the glass panes.
Even a tiny bit of moisture trapped between the panes will cause a certain amount of fogging inside the IG, even if the sael is intact. The desiccant will absorb that moisture and prevent potential fogging.

Guy,

since you and I talked about this phenomena I have seen it addressed a couple of times.
I have seen it associated with both Swiggle and with Intercept.
In the case of the Intercept you hit it right on the head. It is associated with the argon fill hole and is associated with the "baking" process that the Intercept spacer goes thru. Unfortunately, I don't have a better reply. I really don't know why it is happening, but I am going to make a couple of phone calls to peope who are WAY more knowledgeable than I am and see what they have to say.

I have also seen Swiggle droop. But, I have never personally seen the liquid desiccant drip, and I am not sure why it should do so. Swiggle can chemically fog the interior of an IG in certain circumstances, that has been documented as well as the droop, but the drip was new to me when you mentioned it before and I admit I have seen very little about it since.

I suspect that in the case of the assorted swiggle and intercept problems the cause is much more likely to be at the window plant and not in the product itself.
It is kind of like both FenEx and I have had reservations about SuperSpacer...NOT the product, but the possibilty that the window company using the product might not apply it as carefully as the manufacturer might want.
Now, giving credit where due, it does appear that EdgeTech has learned from their competitor's mistakes and that they closely monitor their customer's application of the product, thus ensuring that SuperSpacer does not have the same sort of problems that intercept and swiggle have had.
And, the vast majority of intercept and swiggle are doing fine...but the seal failures in the field and now the "leaking" desiccant has to be making the manufacturers really uneasy, I would think.

Sorry I could not be more help, but I will see what else I can find out.

anyone know how to post a picture? I would like to post a low res pic of the intercept problem so everyone can see it.

I think the only way to post the image is to put it on another website and link to it by pressing the alt-p keys so you get something like this: (you have to take out the -'s to make this work [img ]http://image_url[/img ]

Maybe window4u can post it on his website or you could put the picture on one of those photo printing websites like oFoto.com, you could upload it there and then share it.

I'd be glad to post it. That's the only reason I have the second website is to post stuff for people to see on this website. Send some photos to me at my email address if you would like and I'll put them up on it's own page.