Walkie talkie building in London melts cars by directing suns rays

Thought this story was interesting. It appears that this building in London has a bit of a design fault.Apparently for 2 weeks for two hours a day the sun is in the right position to reflect onto the streets below causing damage to building and cars.
Someone even demonstrated the heat by frying an egg and then eating it.

evelopers of 20 Fenchurch Street, better known as the "Walkie-Talkie" because of its distinctive shape, are investigating reports of the damaging glare, and a number of nearby car parking spaces have been suspended, say reports.
Businessman Martin Lindsay said he was distraught when he returned to find his luxury Jaguar XJ saloon with warped panels along one side.
The wing mirror and badge had also melted from the heat of the reflected sunlight, he claimed.
"They’re going to have to think of something. I’m gutted. How can they let this continue?" he told.
The 37-storey skyscraper is still being built and the developers are trying to find a way of sorting out the problem by putting up cladding and scaffolding to cover the area of pavement on Eastcheap where the Jaguar melted.

hot building

I should imagine people are going to be seeking compensation.

Who needs sunbeds ,10 minutes there and you will be nice and cooked

that i call invention by accident..

if i was the owner of that restaurant i would place a big ass mirror reflecting the rays back at the building

reply to post by maythetruthbeknown

.Apparently for 2 weeks for two hours a day the sun is in the right position to reflect onto the streets below causing damage to building and cars.

oh dear , journalist suffering from scientific illiteracy

the building has been projecting a focused beam across the city every day since the windows were installed

is just that this street is the first time its been noticed

PS - the solution is relatively simple - each window-frame needs shimming on one edge - to difuse the light reflected

I love their solution, close off the 3 parking spaces where cars were melting, GENIUS!

King

I think it's a design flaw. The designers now are probably saying "oops".

It looks like they've built a lower powered version of this, but still concentrated enough to do some damage:

ivanpahsolar.com...

Concentrating the sun's rays is dangerous business.

About the first video...how do you repair a melted jaguar for 946 pounds? It must be a really small amount of damage for that amount, which they didn't show all that clearly.

Originally posted by ignorant_ape
PS - the solution is relatively simple - each window-frame needs shimming on one edge - to difuse the light reflected

I don't think so. At least shimming implies a small adjustment...it needs a lot more than that, plus it will destroy the appearance of the building if they change the angles of the windows, but they may not have much choice.

Seems they had the same problem here

Las Vegas has a new hot spot — but it's not a nightclub.

Guests at the new Vdara Hotel & Spa have complained that the glass skyscraper can magnify and reflect the sun's rays onto an area of the pool at temperatures hot enough to singe hair or melt plastic. It's a phenomenon that some hotel employees jokingly call the Vdara "death ray."...........
...............The phenomenon occurs when intense heat is created by the curved glass surface of the hotel, which acts as a parabolic dish. The glass bounces the rays from the sun and concentrates the light in 10-by-15-foot hot zone on a portion of the pool deck. Absher said that the hotel's designers foresaw the issue and thought they had solved the problem by installing a high-tech film on the hotel's glass windows to reduce the effect.

Originally posted by Pauligirl
Seems they had the same problem here

Las Vegas has a new hot spot — but it's not a nightclub.

Good find. I guess the high tech film didn't help enough:

I could actually smell my hair burning."

Pintas sought refuge away from the sun's rays, where he described what happened to hotel employees. "I said to the staff, 'I don't know if you know what's going on out here, but I was being burned,' and they're like, 'Yeah, we know. We call it the "death ray." ' "

Hair burning is bad but I suspect the London building will have the same problem with the hot spot moving around as the Earth orbits the sun. This makes it harder to shield the affected area on the ground, but I suspect it will be easier to do at the hotel.

Yes I would think the curvature of that glass building could concentrate the Sun light.

Tho I thought the English would be happy with that, they complain 364 days per year it is too cold, too gloomy, too rainy, too whatever.

Come to Australia, in a couple of months time, I can guarantee that you will be able to fry an egg on your car, and turn a cd/dvd into an ashtray in 5 minutes on the dashboard, without the aid of any smoke...or Mirrors!!!. .

Kind of misleading title...It hasn't melted entire cars, it has melted and warped panels on cars. Still a pretty crazy flaw, but not melting entire cars...

Interestingly, it was the same architect who made the same design mistake each time. He should have known that making any building concave was going to create some kind of parabolic mirror. And basic astronomy will tell you that at the same time each day, the Sun makes a figure of eight pattern in the sky (the Analemma), and that throughout the day, the Sun will be somewhere in a band across the sky (the Ecliptic).

www.perseus.gr...

So regardless of the time of year, that hot point (1 degree wide) is going to be somewhere in the neighborhood, whether on the rooftops, the pavements or roads.