Today brought the end to what has been my most in-depth and positively painful part of building our house. Windows. Not that any of the companies I worked with were difficult (actually some went out of there way to provide me with information) but just thinking about the sheer volume of information I had to sift through regarding performance ratings, style and operating parts makes my head hurt.

In an effort to prevent others from enduring the countless number of sleepless nights doing research here’s my short list of windows and my justification for our final selection:

• Accurate Dorwin Windows and Doors out of Winnipeg, Canada — I had never heard of the these windows prior to Benedict & Associates introducing them to me about a month ago. A fiberglass frame gives these simple clean lined windows some of the most energy efficient window ratings available.
• H-windows out of Ashland, Wisconsin — I discovered these windows on livemodern.com where they have become popular among modern design fans for there super simple design, cool pivoting action and combination of wood interiors and metal clad exteriors.
• Inline Fiberglass out of Toronto, Canada — Another fiberglass window from Canada that I new nothing about until just over a couple of weeks ago when a potential sub-contractor introduced us to them. The windows and doors have a simple clean design to them.
• Marvin Window out of Warroad, Minnesota — One of the big names in window manufacturing in the U.S. They offer a wood window with a metal clad exterior but also offers a line of fiberglass windows under the lntegrity by Marvin name that really peaked my interest.

Obviously there are hundreds of great windows and window companies out there but I needed to narrow our list down. As I said before I used the energy efficiency ratings (U-value) and then style as my first to measures, to determine which windows were in and which were out. For us the appeal of commercial storefront or loft style windows was our goal. Many of the aluminum framed windows used for commercial products either don’t meet the energy star rating for windows or they’re so expensive that it wasn’t practical to consider them for our project. We wanted to get windows that had the option of triple pane glass and Argon gas so we could get the highest energy efficiency. I wanted an objective source to compare windows by so I turned to the National Fenestration Rating Council or NFRC (an independent rating system) as my metrics. I was actually able to eliminate one of my window options this way (their windows were not scored and there for I had no way to do an apples-to-apples comparison). However I was able to compare the other three head-to-head in order to determine which would best meet our needs. As well one of the Window companies made a highly efficient fiberglass window that scored great however didn’t offer an awning style option in that line and therefore didn’t work with our project.

The window we selected

I originally considered Accurate Dorwin windows a dark horse. However, with the lowest U-value rating I could find, along with being featured in several “energy efficient” feature homes (like the Millennium Star Home) both in the U.S. and Canada they seemed to be the right fit. Then our rep (Arlo) from Above and Beyond Construction suggested that Corey (my builder) and I take a trip out to a location where the windows had been installed. I have to say we were both impressed with the look and function of the windows and it helped play a big role in my decision.

The Accurate Dorwin windows, shown here on a house our window
rep(Arlo) suggested we visit.

Because the windows use a system called pultruded fiberglass the frames are not only extremely strong they’re physical appearance looks almost like an aluminum clad commercial window. As well they can be commercially painted any color under the son or even have a wood interior finish. In our case we decided to go with a black interior and exterior finish in order to achieve the commercial look and feel we were shooting for. I’m confident that we’re getting a great window and most importantly the right window for us and our project.
With a decision on windows finally made I feel an incredible relief. Both my builder and architect have been very patient as we have weighed the thousands of options and in the process delayed some stages of our project by a week or so. Now with this decision out of the way we’re able to complete the construction drawings and get onto estimates and building.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 26th, 2007 at 11:29 pm and is filed under Architecture, Design, Green, Main, building. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.