The blue colored glass that we thought needed to be replaced turns out to be the color that the majority of the other windows should have been.

If you’ve looked at the exterior photos of our house you will note that on the second floor, two of the large windows are a different color from the rest. This was an issue we had noticed immediately after the glass was installed and had pointed it out to our Accurate Drowin Window rep (Above and Beyond Construction) and our General Contractor. They had already made note of this between the two of them and agreed that we would need to change the glass on those windows to match the rest of the house. We decided that based on the extremely cold temperatures at the time we would wait until spring before we tried to replace these pieces and decrease the risk of them shattering.

Over the past several months I have been in contact with my rep about the windows as well as to inform him of some issues that we have had with several of our doors. In the meantime Above and Beyond Construction and Accurate Dorwin have fallen into a bit of a legal battle, that I wish to stay as clear of as possible. However, their strained relationship has meant that we have had to wait to get the correct glass for our windows until now. Our local rep from Above and Beyond has kept us informed that there was going to be some delays in the process and we have appreciated that but it still has been frustrating.

Our glass arrived on Monday of this past week, after our local reps made a personal audit of all our glass and got in contact with the glass manufacturer from our original order who then did a second audit of our glass. As it turns out it wasn’t just a few windows that were incorrect. Almost all the windows on the front of our house should have been a blue tinted Low-e, suncoat glass. The tan glass that made-up the majority of our south facing windows was of a lessor quality than we had ordered and it was the blue glass that was in the minority, that was the correct glass. The installers from Above and Beyond came out on Thursday and began to replace this glass on the big sections of our windows. They will return this week to complete that glass replacement. I am sick to my stomach to see the glass going to waste, as apparently Accurate Dorwin does not want it back. Stacy and I spent much of the weekend trying to figure out where or how we could salvage the glass, but we really don’t have the space and or use for it now.

The doors are a completely different story. Our three panel sliding glass door came and looked great, however it had a very unique feature, it has two operating sides to it. Almost imedialtey we were displeased with how it operated. I am 6′ tall 215lb. former bodybuilder and this door is hard for me to operate, let alone my wife and kids, who are fraction of my size. Additionally this door had issues with water infiltration along the frame in some places and the track froze up as a result. We also have had issues with the front door and the upstairs deck access doors that appear to have warped. Neither of these doors closes correctly and the upstairs door has is warped so that it is almost impossible to close—UGGH. Above and Beyond construction has offered to replace these doors for us with a door from another High-end Fiberglass window and door manufacturer that they now rep. I’m pleased that they are willing to do this, since from my understanding Accurate Dorwin doesn’t appear to be willing to make this right. The biggest frustration with this is that the doors are framed in by our finished siding material which means that we will again have workers at the house replacing this material as well, what an ugly cycle.

As it stands now I feel like our reps from Above and Beyond Construction are doing the honorable thing and replacing everything and anything that is incorrect, and right now at their expense. Accurate Dorwin in my opinion makes a great window (our energy tests showed this) but seems to greatly lack on the quality control and customer service end. I’m glad to be getting our issues taken care of but at the same time I am frustrated that this is the process that has taken place in order for us to get it done. Additionally I can only hope that anyone else who may have taken my research into consideration when selecting their windows and purchased products from Accurate Drowin does not have any of the same issues.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 7th, 2008 at 10:46 am and is filed under Products, building. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.