Serious Windows – are they all the're cracked up to be?

Written by William Brokhof on October 1st, 2009

Summary:

They start with their frames by using fiberglass which is a better insulator than any other window frame material commonly seen such as wood, aluminum and even vinyl. They then fill these frames completely with spray foam. There are a bunch of small energy saving features inside the windows, but the biggest difference with Serious is that they offer triple and even quadruple glazing. They save cost and weight by using suspended films rather than full sheets of glass for the layers inside the inner and outer most glass panes.

I regularly read a blog called the 100K House about, yes that’s right, a guy who builds a cool modern home for around 100K. The blog is a fount of information on cutting edge building materials and sustainable building practices.

A recent post about some Serious Windows that are 4x more efficient than the Energy Star requirements has my interest piqued. The big question – are they 4x more expensive?

clipped from www.100khouse.com

Super Efficient Windows for the Passive Project

There is a lot more to windows than insulation levels, but in order to keep things simple we will focus on this aspect and cover energy efficient windows in more details in a future post. For windows, U-values are used that equate to the more recognized R-values used to define wall and roof insulation. The lower the U-value, the higher the R-value. In our region of the US, a U-value of 0.32 (R-3.1) is required to reach Energy Star status. Many are surprised at how low insulation values for energy efficient windows are compared to even the lowest R-19 code built wall.