Types of Window
Types of Window
Why is There a Vent in My Vinyl Window?
by Don Ames
Ya, it’s another day and the sunshine sneaking through feels so good. July 1st, I hear a firecraker in the distance.
I like the country homes I get to visit because of the variety of the land mines in the yard. Today is no exception, the horses are great, make good lawn mowers, but you do need to be careful where you step.
As the homeowner and I were standing in the yard at one end of the 1995, double wide, manufactured home, I commmented on the tin foil plainly visible covering the inside of the bedroom window. My guess was that somebody worked at night and needed the darkened bedroom to sleep during the day. But, as the homeowner explained, the tin foil was used to reflect the afternoon sun so the bedroom would not be so hot in the evening. It’s kind of hard to sleep when it’s just too hot.
This window had a hole, a vent louver and a screen built right into the top frame of the window. I see this a lot. On the outside, there is a area of the window frame that sticks out a little bit and on the inside of the window there is a plate that slides back-and-forth that opens and closes the opening. I pointed to the protrusion on the top window frame and asked the owner if he new what that was for. The answer was, “Well, I never really noticed it before.”
Not at all unusual, I bet half of the homes I see with this type of window venting, the owner is not aware of the vent. The manufactured home industry feels that the controlled construction process can make the home too air tight. That the air in the home can become stale and stuffy. So one way to add needed ventilation was to build a hole right into the windows. In partnership with the window vent, there was usually a whole house exhaust fan installed in the ceiling of the hallway that was connected to a timer switch. The timer switch was then, often times, hidden in a closet. With the switch covered up with old suits from the 80′s and old sweaters from the 70′s, the switch might as well be down an old well. Of course, it did not occur to the stale and stuffy home makers to just open a window or have the kids leave a door open.
Detect Energy Moment. There is a couple things I would like to point out that has to do with saving power. First is to remind you that there is often times a ventilation system built into a home that can waste power dollars. Some folks have the window vents open and the ceiling fan running all day and have kids running in and out of the house and they simply don’t need both forms of ventilation. My advise is to close the window vents, turn off the fan and keep the kids.
The second thing is the tin foil. Good idea, reflect the sun rays and reflect the heat. This is actually how a new efficient window works, well, sort of. A new window will have a coating on the surface of the glass that is used to reflect the suns rays. It’s called a low-E coating. Now, pay attention, I don’t want to lose you here. The low-E coating can be installed in different thinknesses and on different surfaces of the window glass. If you are thinking about a window upgrade, be sure to talk to your qualified window contractor so you get the window performance you need. On most homes in a lot of the country, the windows installed on one side of your home should be different than the windows installed on the other side. It has do with window technology like low-E, argon, krypton (not kidding here), U-value, solar heat gain coefficient, visibility transmittance, air leakage, condensation resistance, etc.
Buying the right window is just not as easy as it was when those sweaters were in style.
Thanks for coming, hope to see you tomorrow……..but, I won’t leave the light on for you.