PriWatt film on the executive floor at Kirby Corporation, Houston
Five rooms, twenty-six panels, five circuits
Kirby Corporation is the largest tank barge operator in the United States and runs it from Houston. Its executive floor was refurbished from February 2020, and the board used that floor to try switchable glazing before deciding anything wider.
Four private offices and one conference room. 700 square feet of PriWatt film across 26 glass panels, and, the detail worth copying, a separate pre-wired transformer for each office instead of one unit for the floor.
Why one transformer per office and not one per floor
Both work. A single unit sized to 700 square feet would have driven the whole floor, and it would have been cheaper. What it would not have given anyone is independence.
| One unit for the floor | One per room, as built here | |
|---|---|---|
| Cost of the electrical work | Lower — one location, one supply, one run | Higher — five locations to find, five supplies |
| Who can close a room | Whoever controls the circuit | Whoever is in it |
| A fault takes out | Every panel on the floor | One room |
| Adding a room later | Depends on headroom in the unit | A new unit, independent of the others |
| Where it is decided | Before the partitions are closed. After that it is a rebuild |
On an executive floor the second row is the answer on its own: a private office whose privacy is controlled from somewhere else is not private in the way anyone meant. How the units are sized and where they sit is on isolation transformers, and the same question across a run of partitions is on office partitions.
Twenty-six panels, and what that number means
700 square feet over 26 panels averages 27 square feet each: a panel roughly 4 ft by 7 ft, a partition module and not a wall. That is normal, and worth understanding, because area alone does not price a job.
- Every panel has its own busbar and its own tail, so 26 panels is 26 electrical terminations, not one
- Several small panels cost more per square foot than a few large ones: the same area, more edges, more connections
- A panel reaches 143 in tall and 70–72 in wide, so a wall wider than that is divided whether anyone wants it or not
- Where the joints fall is a design decision if it is made early and an accident if it is not
Pricing lists what moves a price on a switchable project, and what does not.
Three things this page does not claim
It does not make the offices quieter. The version of this case study published elsewhere attaches an acoustic rating of Rw 35–36 dB to it. That figure belongs to a particular laminated glass build-up on a different project and is a property of the glass, not of the switchable layer. This installation is film applied to panes that were already in the partitions, which changes their acoustic performance by nothing at all. If a room needs quiet as well as privacy, that is a glazing specification.
PDLC does not polarise light. It scatters it, from liquid-crystal droplets sitting at random angles, which is why the private state reads as frost and why it works as a rear-projection surface. Polarisation is a different mechanism in a different technology.
It is not described here as hygienic beyond what glass is. There is no fabric in the room and the surface is cleaned with the glazing. That is the whole of it, and it is enough.
Specified on this project
PriWatt PDLC switchable film
Self-adhesive film applied to glass already in the building. Private unpowered, clear when switched.
Offices and boardrooms
Partitions, meeting rooms and executive offices — the application this belongs to.
Office partitions
How a glazed run is built: where the joints fall, and how one transformer serves a wall.
A project like this one
An executive floor, a set of private offices, or any run where each room has to control its own glass. PriWatt manufactures in Pompano Beach, Florida. Every quote is worked from the project’s own drawings, so send dimensions. A photograph with the sizes written on it does the same job. Earlier than that, book the call.
