Daily Home Renovation Tips

 Several weeks ago we wrote three articles on the air leaks which had occurred in two of our ENERGY STAR rated replacement windows, even though they were merely one year old.Several weeks went by between the time we notified the sales representative of the company from whom we purchased the windows and when the installers arrived at our home.

Why?

The reason is simple. The manufacturer needed time to, well, manufacturer the replacement ENERGY STAR rated windows and we wanted to wait until it was nicer weather outside before the replacement occurred. Nothing like having cold weather outside to jack up the heating utility bill during window replacement, right?

So Yarmer and his assistant (the installers) arrived at the agreed upon date and time.

Very quickly they proceeded to replace the one window with the air leak in the bedroom. Here it is in the picture below; notice the condensation in the far upper right of the window on the right.

Now, as you all know I have said repeatedly that I am not a contractor or in the business; I’m just a simple home owner sharing our home renovation, improvement, maintenance and energy conservation experiences so you can perhaps learn a thing or two to help you in your own such endeavours.

However, I thought that the replacement of the slider window would be rather simple; remove the ENERGY STAR rated slider window containing the leak and replace it with the fully encased replacement.

Nope.

What they proceeded to do was to remove the glass from the encasement. So as I learned, the double paned window is it’s own sealed unit which is then installed within the encasement. Who knew?

Here are some pictures of the activity, which did not taken them very long at all.

First, they proceeded to remove the plastic cover on all 4 sides of the interior of the window. 

Next, Yarmer proceeded to cut the caulking on the outside of the window which was between each of the outside portion’s inserts and the outside glass. He is using what looks like a pizza cutter of all things. :) 

Next, the new double pane window would be put in place within the frame, the four inserts on the top, bottom, left and right sides of the inside frame would be put back in place (as shown in the picture below) and silicone caulking placed along the same edges but on the outside of the frame. 

I said would, right? Well, what you are seeing above is the replacement of the original double window pane.

Why? Well, once Yarmer was all set to put the replacement double window pane into the frame he very quickly noticed that the replacement double window pane was the wrong size.

How? Well, if you look at the very first picture above, you will see the condensation on the right side of the ENERGY STAR windows, right?

Well, the manufacturing facility made the replacement for the left window in the first picture.

Oh well, back to the drawing board.

It was a similar story for the large window in the family room. The manufacturing facility again made the wrong size of replacement double window pane. This time, however, the reason was they they use the frame to frame measurements and did not deduct approximately 2 inches vertical and horizontal that they need to for the glass to fit. We don’t know why.

So, we still have two ENERGY STAR windows with broken seals. To continue to the final article in this series, simply select this link to Part 5.