Posted on 03/11/2017 10:47:47 AM PST by LouAvul
My house was built in 1998 with builder grade thermopane windows. It has four singles, three doubles and one triple window.
I know of the Anderson and Pella brands, but know nothing about them other than the name.
I'd like soundproofing as well as minimal heat transfer.
Recommendations? Thanks.
Read the warranties of your top choices. Anderson and Pella are not what they used to be!
The wife is very pleased.
Had to have six old (1955) double-hung windows replaced and got four rep's in for quotes.
Anderson quoted me, (get ready), $18,000 dollars!
They were just standard (1st floor) bedroom windows - and they weren't even gold-plated.
We pulled a building permit and had to meet modern egress / firefighter ingress standards which made us choose the French Casements (no center pillar in a two-window unit) in two bedrooms. We also had to reframe several window openings which required interior drywall and exterior stucco work. Anderson sells their "Renewal" windows which fit inside your existing window frames, but that approach wouldn't meet egress and also lost a lot of window area.
We wanted low maintenance so went with aluminum clad windows. After ten years, the exterior aluminum cladding looks new and we haven't painted it once. That is really remarkable. The wood gives a nice "thunk" when closing and latching kind of like a German car door. The fiberglass and vinyl units just didn't give me confidence like that.
Be sure to watch your contractor carefully. Our contractor sent out a couple of Russians who they claimed had installed a lot of their windows. But the guys were not shimming the windows in the frame openings - they were counting on the nailing flange on the outside and the inside trim work to hold the windows in the correct location. When they shot their nails through the window frame into the studs, you could see the joints on the windows opening up! They naturally said "this is the way we always do it" -- I got REALLY pissed off at them and threw them out. The company then brought in their top installer who properly shimmed the windows to make sure they were plumb, level, and square in the openings. I pity people who have zero knowledge of construction techniques because contractors and poorly trained installers cutting corners will lead to bad installations and possibly windows not operating correctly or leaking.
One thing I didn't do is force the use of a good membrane or sill pan on the rough opening before the window units were installed. I don't recall if they used any waterproofing on the rough sill at all. Read "Installing and Flashing Windows Correctly" in Fine Homebuilding to get smart on this detail. Fortunately, we don't get a lot of driving rain here and all of our windows have remained watertight.
One other thing I did was get some custom size poplar molding milled at a local mill shop. The stock moldings at our local molding dealer were either too small or too large, so I had some made at an in-between size. This kept the molding in proportion to the windows and room scale. I think it helps make things look more pleasing to the eye. We spent a lot of time evaluating different casing / stool / sill molding combinations. This is where you will get a lot of payback on interior visual appearance.
We purchased Low-e glass to help control heat flow, but this glass has an odd color when viewed from the street. Maybe that has improved in ten years. If I were doing it again, I probably would skip that coating to improve curb appeal. It isn't really a big thing, but you know how it is when you look at your own place.
Lastly, one thing I regret not doing while the walls were open was converting the 2x4 walls to 2x6 to increase wall insulation and caulk all the outside walls to make them airtight. We have pretty drafty 1952 stick-built 8 ft stud wall construction. It wouldn't have added a lot of cost to tear the exterior sheetrock off, add 2x2 sleepers to each stud, put in proper insulation (we have blown-in fiberglass) and re-sheetrock the rooms. But you have to draw the line somewhere.
Good luck! You'll be very happy
Just had Anderson here for an estimate.
For the front double window, a sliding glass door in the kitchen, and three other windows (one kitchen, one dining room, one bedroom), they want 13,500.
That still leaves me with another six windows to get done (probably about 7500 if I go with Anderson).
I won’t get back NEARLY what they suggest I will because the value of my neighborhood is low (average house cost around 100k, with me probably about 115-120)
House is 25 years old. I’ve done some nice things to fix it up (new AC and furnace, new roof, really nice garden) but none of it really adds to the value of the house itself, although I feel it will make for a quick easy sale when it finally does go up for sale.
The Anderson windows are really nice but pricey.
Mathews is a conservative company
Remember POTSCRUBBER dishwashers?
Yeah...no more.
Home Depot just did all our windows. House was built in 1978 so has very large windows and a triple slider and a double slider. We had to do their best quality for the triple slider and the double was French doors with blinds in the middle. The rest were their standard double pane argon gas. We paid $8k and they finished in a day and a half and did a great job.
I’m retired and the helpful Democrats have driven down our home values here, so don’t want to spend a lot to fix up before moving, but don’t mind doing research to get decent value.
All my upstairs sunny windows have curtains on the inside and are rarely opened because I live in an area that goes from “heater needed” to “need air conditioning” practically overnight, so I covered the interior glass of each sash with gray 3M window film. (My builder-grade aluminum double-hungs have snap-out mullions.) As long as you don’t have sill rot and the windows still operate well, insulating film is much cheaper than new windows, works well and it cut my heating/cooling bill. But you have to have good hand skills and patience to apply it neatly without air bubbles or peeling corners.
Next I need to find a hack to replace the bottom insulation strip of the windows that isn’t even visible when the windows are closed; but after fifteen. years it has dryrotted.
If you can, install them yourself. Habitat for Humanity runs a shop called “Restore.”
Architect here.... what do you want aesthetically? Vinyl windows tend to have clunky frames and are a pet peeve of mine. Having said that we use them all the time bc the price point is consumer friendly. For nicer projects, we specify an aluminum clad wood window with simulated divided lites and low-e . Or all wood no cladding if owner prefers. For my own house... I’m living with my cruddy old windows until I can afford to replace the necessary ones with a wood framed, true divided lite. But that is just me. I’ll take beauty over performance any day. Even with the most efficient window, you still have a gaping hole in your exterior wall.
Hey! A computer at work we use still has that!.......
3 years ago it was $12,000 after I got all I could from them. 16 double-hung windows. Frosted bathroom glass, grids and screens on everything, the 3 in the front are Yuge. Two guys removed the old, cleaned everything up, installed the new windows, trimmed it all out and cleaned up their mess in less than 10 hours.
If the guys actually making the windows are as good as the 2 guys that installed them, I got a good deal.
Used Anderson, including one five-panel, one three-panel, one bow and one French door unit, when we built our house in 1987 - still doing well as far as I can tell......
I have at least one application freeze on me per day. Usually have to kill it in the Application manager.
XP was bad but it is my impression that 7 is worse.
Just make sure that you deal with the Free Auto Upgrade to Windows 10 that Windows 7 will force on you. You don’t want that.
XP is no longer supported. No virus protection from MS so Norton and other programs work. However, third party programs like Java, Google Chrome, Drop Box are no longer supported and many sites don't support the XP IE. Still, a pretty solid and tested OS.
Vista is no longer supported. Terrible OS. Good riddance.
Win 7 (64bit pro). Pretty solid. Like you I use it at work a lot I have stability issues but it works. Still supported by MS until 2020. I upgraded two computers — legal fresh installation licenses can be found for $35. Don't pay $150. Check your hardware compatibility.
Win 8. Terrible like Vista. Avoid if possible.
Win 10. We are running upgraded win 10 and original win 10. No issues so far. The two win 7 computers mentioned above are not supported under win 10 (hardware incompatibilities) and might be upgradable but not worth the risk. Win 10 seems to be pretty solid, so far — both automatic upgrade and original installation.
Microsoft doesn’t spy as much as they used to .
Ya. I know. :(
I just finished a major renovation on our house. Rebuilt the entire roof and added the radiant barrier decking and a wrap around porch. Took the outside down tho the studs, all new sheathing and Tyvec wrap and brick. We replaced all the old builder grade windows with double pane energy efficient windows.
My electricity bill dropped from $390 a month to $145 a month. I knew it was going to drop, but I was rather amazed at the results.
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