Replacement Windows

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Summer Projects

Choosing and Installing

Do your winter wallet a favor. Carpenter Michael Phillips outlines several options for replacing those drafty fuel wasters.

"Just pop out your old windows and pop in the new!" Those slick, f ullcolor ads you get with the Sunday newspaper supplements make window replacement seem effortless. It isn't. . . if done right. But if your house is over 25 or 30 years old, the effort may well be worth making. Before winter winds begin rattling those leaky old windows and sucking out your heat, here are a few things to consider.

The ads also trumpet: "Never Paint Again!" And, window frames of solid aluminum or vinyl—or the better-quality designs made of wood that's covered or "clad" with a thin layer of metal or plastic—have the color permanently baked on or molded in. Inside or out, you'll never again have to paint skinny little wood moldings between panes, labor with a razor blade to scrape overflow off the glass and cut around the painted-in sashes.

Modern widows are genuine energy savers, greatly reducing the 50% of heat or air-conditioning energy a typical home loses through its windows. Frames incorporate space-age weather stripping that stays resilient through heat and cold and virtually halts the "infiltration" of heated/cooled air to the outdoors and of outside air in. Modern tension/balance systems insulate as they keep sashes in place and easy to raise by maintaining a gentle but even side pressure. You'll never again have to "prop up the summer breeze" with a stick, or stir up the mouse nests in an old sash casement as you fish around after an iron sash weight lost when a brittle old sash cord snapped.

You can still buy windows made with single-glass panes in old-fashioned barewood sashes and frames. But that's for un-heated/air-conditioned sheds and barns. Modern house windows contain insulated glass—sandwiches of two or three panes sealed around the perimeter, with the air between evacuated or replaced with an inert gas for greater insulating value. Insulated glass in a modern frame can reduce heat loss by as much as 35%.

(Please look over the sidebar, "A Window on Window Lingo," so we can agree on often-confusing terminology. What many call a window frame is properly called a "sash"; a pane of glass in a window is a "light"; a windowsill is really a "stool cap:') Confusion also exists as to what constitutes a "replacement window:" For do-it-yourself installation, a replacement double-hung window is a conventional rectangular wooden frame containing a pair of sashes held in place along the sides by tension/balance strips and with unornamented top-, bottom-, and side-exterior trim boards fastened to the frame. (Interior trim must match house decor, so is left to the homeowner to specify and install after the window is in. Also, crank-out casement windows, picture windows, patio sliding windowdoors are beyond this article's scope—and of most homeowners' carpentry skills.)

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