Saving Windows by John Leeke

[JasonW]

In my experience over the past half-century it appears the building construction industry has done well by making more and more windows at ever increasing profit margins. When working as a kid in my father's shop during the 1950s and early '60s it seemed like the inevitable march of modern progress. But then in the mid '60s we began to focus on caring for our customers' older and historic homes. It was clear that the greater industry was leaving behind a crying need for taking care of all the existing windows, so our customers were happy to find that our shop had the traditional knowledge and skills to do it.

There have always been a few individual tradespeople and smaller contractors who were willing to do this window maintenance and repair work. Some of us even found good work in a nitch of the market called historic preservation...

more (http://www.traditional-building.com/Previous-Issues-11/AugustForum11.html)

[Msargent]

Jason the old windows to be repaired are single panes . With new glazing freash coat of paint the R value the same as a double pane gas insulated .What about the holes where the weights and pulleys go air gets through there something terrible? Please sell me why I should spend the cost to repair vrs throw them out and buy brand new

[JasonW]

That's easy. Here's a pile of 12 year old replacement windows going to the dump.

https://fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/300108_10150267956548091_587758090_7768977_1051596 _n.jpg

Do you think these paid for themselves in energy savings in 12 years? I doubt it. A lot of testing has been done about energy loss in homes and the loss in windows is only about 5% of the total problem. When original wood windows get fixed properly and an interior or exterior storm is installed your windows will have close to the same efficiency if not more in some cases than new windows. They will also last longer. They can be fixed if broken and you won't be having a crew of carpenters showing up every decade or so to replace them again. To me the best return on investment is to fix, not replace.

The people who's windows are pictured above are spending 30k to replace the windows AGAIN. If they had put the money into fixing the old windows instead of replacing them in the first place they could be spending that 30k on a nice vacation or something...

[Msargent]

Why would new windows need to be replaced only after 12 years? seems like they bought Junk windows, Or cut corners somewhere.