If you have recently purchased an older home, you’ll understandably be wary of where you spend your renovation dollars. Although incentives to replace your windows and drafty doors are everywhere (every time you fight to open or properly close a window or door being one of them), it may not be the right time to tackle a whole house window and door replacement.
Read Ten Reasons You Should Consider Replacing All Your Windows at Once
Forest City Window & Door Ltd. are professional window and door contractors in the London and St. Thomas area and have provided expert installations for many happy clients since 1993.
Please read the following list of the top maintenance tips that will help to keep your existing windows and doors lasting until you’re ready for new ones.
Break down the work to a manageable amount and feel better knowing you’re saving money on your heating and cooling bills. (If you tackle one window every week, the pressure is lessened.)
There’s nothing more lovely than a cool breeze, but that breeze also brings in tiny dirt particles that, over time, keep your windows from operating easily. You’ll be reluctant to use them if you can’t open your windows or they don’t correctly close because of accumulated dirt particles.
Use properly sharpened scraping tools to make the job go more quickly. You’ll be surprised to see how much paint will have accumulated on top of what may have. Prime any raw wood or previous oil paint before repainting, and make sure you brush away any drips; the most critical piece of painting advice.
Once your windows are freshly cleaned and scraped, it’s time to use some of the many iterations of weatherstripping available for drafty windows and warped doors. Keep up with repairs, caulking, and sealing to limit unwanted air movement at your window.
Cellular, known as honeycomb, are the best energy-efficient shades. Both outside and inside mount have advantages; your room will feel warmer in the winter. Pull your shades closed during the hottest period of the day to feel cooler in the summer.
Similarly, lined drapes protect the room from feeling drafty and prohibit the hot sun from overheating your room.
Low-e film is sold by the roll, and similar to the qualities of tin foil, the metal in the low-e coating reflects the heat away from its surface. It can reflect 70 – 80% of solar heat and conserve 50% of the room’s internal temperature during the winter.
Sealed units are composed of two (or sometimes three) panes of glass with a space filled with inert gas in between. However, nothing looks worse than fogged sealed units. Most sealed units have a date of manufacture viewable as a sticker near a corner on the spacer. Warranties are usually 10 years. Most window companies can provide sealed units for any manufactured window.
