Why would anyone care about restoring old windows? Energy savings beyond Low-E Myths.
"Corporate Green" building systems rarely means sustainability focused. What are the colleges teaching students but to use Global Corp products, forced by code, unhealthy for you & Earth?
If you do it right, not expensive or hard, but you can make older wood sash windows like new again. Better yet, you can also make a few modifications by adding silicone weather stripping, altering the sash lifting weights system, and thus be able to insulate around the frame at the trimline outside where the most air leaks to minimize leaks. The reglazing of the glass into the wood is a simple process and, once learned, somewhat fun if you like playing with putty, clay, or Playdo as a kid. While there are a few precautions to consider, the process is safe and easy once you learn how and can be completed in a reasonable amount of time. It will also give you a great sense of satisfaction as you learn how to perfect your application and finishing of the glazing, especially if you have an OCD streak in you. It is like a meditation in motion to make it look perfect, and it is possible.
Single pane? Extremely energy inefficient.
People restore model T’s but don’t use them every day.
I think stained glass would have been prettier
Melvis Riser Put the storm windows on for more energy efficiency, but if you trap the air, answer me clearly, how much air do you breathe an hour? Just sitting thinking of the answer, 500 gallons. So in a tiny house, excited and perhaps mad because I challenged you and a friend up to 750 gallons each.
Supposing you have windows tightly closed and no air exchanger, which you would if you knew that within a few hours, you would be out of good air, hypoxic by morning if you made love in the loft up there.
So you think that being 4,000 gallons short by morning in your tight tiny house, not including the child of your spouse, and think that is better... energy efficiency means too much to you for by dying early, you will save much energy, but why make your child too?
900 calories per square inch of insulated glass two layers thick, millions for a single tiny house burned to make your glass.
Add to that the wood is good, but since it is not, the aluminum or vinyl also puts pollution and then toxins in your air. Breathe that in and think you saved some energy for 7 years when dried-out plastics break and built-in obsolescence takes its toll.
By then, the RV has no value, and the people who got sick tell you of the mold and crap you breathe instead of the fresh air that you get when using windows that leak fresh air.
Ask me next, for which I care, you making new that is sickly, polluting, and unlike mine, not sustainable with a short life instead of what these windows can do, a hundred years or more,
6 lifetimes compared to one for the new window, such as YOU suggest, are good. You got to be kidding. A comedian on the internet stage, for sure. Funny dude indeed. Weatherstripping added to the insulation I do proved that this was far better for energy, but health and youthing is my priority, for sure. Prove me wrong. I will endure the debate that you can not win.
To start with, the pictures you see show the components of the window, which include the sashes, which are the wood around the glass element that goes inside the window jamb or the frame that holds the sashes together. There are groves cut into the sides to add the divider/tracks that the sashes ride up and down in as the ropes that go through the wheels at the top of the window around to the weights that balance it where you want it without it dropping back down to crush your child's fingers, as it will if the ropes break. This can be caused by age and sun damage on the older ropes, but often it is a consequence of someone getting paint on the ropes while painting the windows, which gets hard and makes the ropes brittle so as not to go over the wheels as well and to break much earlier in their life than if left without paint.
Another issue can be when the sash ropes stretch. If not installed at the right height to allow for that, the slack in the ropes will cause them to jump off the wheel enough to get the sash rope stuck in between the wheel and side where it can jamb, get cut, and even break by pulling on the window when trying to close it.
If not repaired or unstuck, the window can be caught in a partially closed position until fixed, or the rope gets cut and forces a replacement. If left ignored, the typical way to hold up the sash becomes a stick to prop it up, thus the nickname “Stick-propped” sashes, which lead to broken fingers and glass when they slam down because of the cat or kids knocking them out without thinking about Uncle Gravity stepping into the picture fast with Uncle Murphy along generally.
While that can be done with the trim on, replacing sash ropes is not a quick, easy job normally as it will generally entail the removal of the trim on that side of the window on the interior wall, which can turn into quite a can of worms before you are done in an old house. Paint, caulk around the windows, wallpaper, and a few other issues arise when taking the trim off, usually best to run a utility razor around the edge to cut them lose before pulling the trim, or they will peel off the wall with it, adding greatly to the stress of the job. There are window weight pockets in the high-end windows, particularly up in the northern climate, where the weights were in wooden shafts to keep the cold winds from coming through the sash wheel slots, but they are not common in houses of the south. I will not attend to that type for this short article.
This process of pulling out the sashes and installing ropes is an article by itself but suffice it to say. It is only necessary to use the weights to operate the bottom sash, as few use the option of dropping the top sash down a bit to let the hot air out the top of the window and the cooler air in the bottom to circulate air in a room better. If you are not inclined to do that, then you can use that space in the weight slot space beside the older windows (3” extra per side when framing the hole and 3” on the height too). This lets the bottom sash operate and seals the top sash in with caulk so there is no air leak, and it stays square. You can add weather stripping to the sides and bottom, and then you have a weather-tight window. Though I prefer to keep mine open with good screens and have lots of airflow in my house, some prefer the AC or heaters on when the weather is not to their liking. The right treatment of older windows will make them nearly as energy efficient as a modern High-Energy Efficient window that will fog up eventually and need replacing. You add the glass storm windows on the older windows, and the 4” of dead air space is equal to the 1/8” with Argon gas that you pay high dollars to watch go bad every 13 years or when the warranty runs out, whichever comes first.
Once you learn how to do the glazing, applying the primer on the wood mullions and edges where the putty or glazing will go on will be a great benefit. Also, you can use an old timer trick which seemed odd when I heard it. Take some rubber cement and add a bit of water to it so it slightly emulsifies it, and then paint it on the area where the window glazing compound will be spread to seal the windows after you put the glazing clips on them to hold them in the wooden sash. The glue sets up for about 15 minutes to get a bit sticky, and then the glazing is applied with one of several techniques you can learn, and it holds well, does not leak behind it, and yet is easier to remove years later if you need to replace the glass. That is the way I heard it long ago, and I did use that technique without any evidence that it was a problem later.
There is a word of caution with the Dapp-33 glazing most used. Be sure to wear gloves as the chemicals in that mix harm your health many years later, and you will absorb them through your skin. While much more expensive, the organic Linseed Oil Glazing is a better product but does take more work to use. It hardens well and lasts for a hundred years from the windows I have seen done right long ago. Can you say Parkinsons’ symptoms? That is a possible consequence of letting chemicals like lacquer thinner, benzene, acetones, and other such product solvents get into your skin.
The various window weight wheels, from cheesy to industrial, are a whole subject in themselves as hardware collectors. Yes, the doorknob collectors from the “Bewitched” TV show do exist. They have the knobs, plates, hinges, and window sash locks that were once incredible art pieces too. Artisans made all things beautiful in the days of the rich buying Real Estate Jewelry to adorn their homes with. That time is gone for the most part, and now people use styrofoam trim, vinyl windows, and hazardous waste like sheetrock is composed of to build instead of quality wood, windows, and doors. Trash-built houses of today are not worth the work to salvage as the parts, once installed, seldom have any future value once the house is past its intended built-in obsolescence of 15 years for most items used to construct it.
Tim, one young man I mentored and taught how to do complete window restorations, went on to specialize in doing that on Victorian house restorations to earn as much as a thousand dollars a window to rebuild them. That could be as much as $30,000 for a single larger house remodel, and yet, it would be worth it for the savings to the sellers versus making new windows of equal quality would be nearly triple the cost of saving the old originals. Just one enrichening career to be had in this world of restoration and sustainable living. It is not just about buying all new stuff to save the world, but it is about salvaging the best of our past that save massive energy and trees. Glass costs over 800-1,000 calories of heat per square inch to produce. Saving old windows and creating a career that pays well from seeing through the windows differently, with a salvagers perspective, is a great way to save energy before the house is even moved into, so much so that you have banked the savings well into the future. In effect, you are creating negative carbon footprint balances in your lifetime carbon bank account that prove you are exemplifying what wii, all the “I”s of the world, must do to reduce pollution in our world.
Just like the windows in most homes today, few components in the modern building materials categories are meant to last your lifetime. They are meant to last 30 years at the most, not a lifetime of anything more than a cat or small turtle, really, far from a human. Hence, you never hear of lifetime warranties anymore on most products unless it refers to the lifespan of the oldest person working at the place that made the product and make sure the elderly are on the staff to keep that term short. I have to make it sound funny because it is ridiculous how the industries have left the American Made Lifetime Guarantee behind in our modern world of manufacturing and sales. Now it is simply: Buyer Beware!
Check with us if you are a subscriber, and let us know if you would like to see more or participate in a seminar to restore some windows to build your house with soon too. Whether tiny houses or bigger mansions, windows are key to the beauty and longevity of the house. We have thousands of vintage windows, many with new/old stock quality, hand-blown glass, never installed or painted Cypress from virgin forests 150 years ago. Yes, we have the new old stock in stock, but only for subscribers by appointment, and the means is just below this line. Join us soon.
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