The Marvin windows finally arrived after a lengthy delay. Part of this delay had to do with an additional 2 week lead time when ordering special glass or glazing from Marvin. As I mentioned in a previous post, I ordered these Marvin Integrity windows with Cardinal 179 glass for the south wall windows. The Cardinal 179 glass has a low U-Value of .28 and a high SHGC value of .70. That means that 70% of the radiant heat from the sun will penetrate through the glass into the home. The overhang for the second story windows was determined based on allowing the radiant gain to only be available from mid October to mid April--passive solar heating. Because the home was built on a crawl space, I reduced the overall size of the southern windows as I won't have much thermal mass to absorb the heat gain from the sun. We will have to build seperate overhangs/awnings for the main level south windows prior to installing the siding. I decided on Marvin windows for several reasons. The performance #'s of these windows are very good compared to the overall price (high quality for good value). Also, I wanted a window manufacturer that would integrate the Cardinal 179 glass into a fiberglass exterior cladding. Marvin now offers awning and casement windows in a full fiberglass frame, but the additional $1300 didn't make sense from a payback perspective. Fiberglass is much less susceptible to expansion and contraction from temperature changes, while also being very low maintainance. The interior of the windows is a high quality pine that I will eventually stain or paint to match the interior finishing colors. I chose only awning and casement style windows as my experience has shown me these seal much better than double hung windows for overall better performance. I minimized the amount of north windows and requested a very low SHGC rating for the east and more importantly west windows (.20). Having a lot of windows sure is nice, but finding that balance between aesthetics and energy performance is very important.
At first, I thought that installing a window would be easy. But when I finally tried it out myself, I had some difficulty because of the alignments and measurements that needed to be done. I have also used integrity windows in our house because they offer this kind of performance that balances the heat and cold. It’s great for ventilation!
ReplyDelete- Julio Wells
Windows are really important for the house, providing us and our home with proper ventilation so that we aren’t left too hot during the summer, or too cold during the winter. Anyway, don’t forget to use window treatments for your windows. You can choose either to use blinds, curtains, or shutters. Cheers!
ReplyDelete- Leif Clancy
Enerluxwindows serving with the best quality and guaranteed Fiberglass replacement windows, fiberglass window manufacturers, fiberglass casement windows, fiberglass window frames best fiberglass replacement windows and triple pane fiberglass windows.
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