Bring the Outdoors In on a Budget

Posted by: Ken Mariotti

Today’s major trend in home building and remodeling are home designs that connect the outdoors with the indoor. These new wide-span doors from Marvin, Andersen, and others, create expansive openings, while engineered to slide easily and make a perfect seamless connection between the indoors and outdoors. A traditional slider can be up to 10 foot wide, while these doors can be up to 16 feet wide. The design significantly opens the view and allows for natural ventilation into your home.

Marvin Integrity Sliding Doors

These beautifully designed and engineered doors can take a big bite out of your budget. Before you rule out creating oversized openings between your home and the outside, consider other alternatives that will give you essentially the same result for a smaller investment.

Creating oversized door openings and expansive window walls can be achieved on a budget by using standard sized windows and doors put together in a modular way to achieve the look you want. Depending on the overall size you need, your options for creating the look you want are limitless.

Sliding patio doors have evolved and can now be selected in one-two-or three panel doors, up to eight feet tall, creating a wide opening. Add sidelights or a transom to expand your views even more. You can also use multiple sliding doors side by side to open the space even wider. Sliding patio doors can be very versatile system if designed where immense areas of glass are desirable.

French doors are a classic favorite that adds architectural detail to any space. Although these hinged doors require less wall space than sliding doors, if they are in-swing doors you’ll need to plan your furniture arrangement to accommodate them. The pair of doors are typically about six feet wide, although you can pair the doors with sidelights and even place two sets of French doors side by side to fill an entire wall.

Andersen 100 Series Sliding Doors

The French slider has the appearance of a classic French door with wider stiles and rails, while functioning as a sliding glass door. It’s a nice hybrid between the sliding patio door and the French hinged door. Typically, French sliders have four panels, two of which remain stationary. When closed, the center panels look like a pair of French doors – a classically beautiful look.

Sidelights, Transoms and Awnings can be mixed and matched with sliding, French doors, or French sliders to create an expansive opening. Traditionally, sidelights were narrow picture windows, which were more decorative than functional. Transoms over interior and exterior doors adorned old homes. Awnings were used, prior to air conditioning to ventilate a home. In the 1950’s when ceilings were lowered these functional windows largely disappeared from home designs. Today, these styles are making a comeback to ventilate spaces, as modern homes are built with higher ceilings, large glass windows and glass doors.

Andersen French Doors

The new expansive doors that connect the outdoors with the indoor are magnificent – lift and slides create an uninterrupted wall of glass – spanning 16 feet tall, which disappears into a wall. Folding glass doors achieve a similar look but don’t require pockets in an adjacent wall. Or Pivot doors that swing open to a perfect 90º are all the rage because of their architectural beauty. Now you can create the same look on your budget with a little imagination.

Marvin, Andersen, Pella and other Woodlandselected window and door manufacturers offer unlimited choices to create oversized openings – you dream and we’ll help you put the components together to bring the outside in.

Low-E Gets Personal

Submitted by: Ken Mariotti

Perhaps no term is uttered more frequently, in the world of windows, than Low-E. By now, most people think they know what that means, but few know what it means for their home. This is because continued advances in glazing (glass) technologies allow you, with a little advance planning; select from different Low-E finishes for different windows in your home. With minimal effort your budget will go further and you’ll get a more energy efficient home.

Marvin Windows Gallery

A Northern Climate

In a nutshell, our northern region climate is dominated by heating energy use. Our summers can get hot and humid requiring air conditioning, but heat waves are usually short lived, while winter is cold and long. It’s a straightforward decision to choose windows with a higher SHGC (solar heat gain co-efficient), which means the window, will reflect heat back into the home, collecting more solar heat.

Window Orientation

In addition to our northern climate, you want to consider the orientation of the windows in your home. Specifying Low-E requirements for different windows allows you to maximize your home’s comfort and spend your money wisely. In other words, it’s no longer, one size fits all, and instead Low-E comes in a sophisticated array of options to meet your exact needs.

Here are simple northern region strategies to consider when planning a remodel or new home.

South facing windows: Choose a high SHGC glazing – above 0.40. South windows are a good source of passive heat in winter, but if you use this strategy you also need a roof overhang that provides shading in the summer.

West facing windows:  Choose a low SHGC glazing to reduce much unwanted afternoon summer heat gain. Overhangs don’t work well against the low evening sun.

Marvin Windows Gallery

East facing windows:  Like west facing windows, keep the size of these windows to a minimum in order to control unwanted solar gain or loss. Most people select a low SHGC, however some prefer a high SHGC glazing as a good way to warm cool mornings.

North facing windows: Minimal contribution to the temperature control of your home’s interior.

In closing, once you’ve arrived at your overall requirements, you can further specify select Low-E options that will reduce fading, increase your visible light, improving insulating values or lowering condensation problems, to name just a few.

3 Things to Know About Passive Solar Heat

Posted by: Ken Mariotti

Soaring costs for heating and cooling our homes, energy efficiency becomes a priority. Homes are becoming better insulated and sealed allowing the heating and cooling systems to operate at peak efficiencies, reducing usage and costs. The next leap in efficient home design and maintenance is maximizing passive solar heating and natural ventilation. Windows play an invaluable role in the performance of our houses and today’s window options can provide a custom energy efficient solution for your unique house. 

Wikipedia

As a child, before air conditioning was built into most homes, I remember summertime when my mother would open all the windows at night or the very early morning to cool off the house. Then, about 10:00 am she’d close them and pull the drapes to keep the house cool the entire day. Granted the house was dark and stuffy, but compared to the 100º temperatures outside it was a haven.

Today we hear about home energy assessments to measure airtightness, or dual pane low-e windows to manage solar heat, or low U factors to measure performance, but do we really know what these mean for our own home?

Most people don’t know how to remodel or design a new home applying energy efficient principles. While there are multiple things that go into making a house energy efficient, there are three basic principles when selecting your windows: the orientation, the glass, and ventilation.

Window Orientation

If you are remodeling your home or designing a new one the sizes and locations of windows should be based on the cardinal directions of the house – north, south, east, and west.

North/south oriented windows are the best option for visual and thermal comfort and accommodate larger glass openings without over heating, compared to east/west facing windows.

• North-facing windows admit even, natural light with little glare and almost no unwanted summer heat gain

• South-facing windows provide the most winter sunlight but little direct sun during the summer

East/West facing windows receive direct daylight at certain times of the day, which is often preferred for breakfast rooms or sunrooms and should be equipped with shading options.

• East-facing windows provide morning sun, but sunlight entering at low angles often leads to blinds down and lights on and offers little heating in the winter

• West-facing windows allow the afternoon and summer evening light to lengthen the day, may require blinds to cut the glare and invites little heat in winter

Glass

Robert G McArthur Studios

Selecting the right glass depends on the location of your windows and the geographical region of your home. Low-e has become a universal term for energy efficient coating applied to the window glass. Actually, advances in glass coatings and new regional energy codes, Low-e options can be customized to your home’s requirements. Whether you need high light and low heat or greater protection from fading – there’s a Low-e for your requirement. Next week’s blog will explain your glass options in detail.

Ventilation

When remodeling or designing a new home select window styles and window locations that optimize ventilation for added comfort and efficiency.

Fresh air circulation makes a huge difference in your well being while indoors. Educate your self on the many options including skylights with automatic sensors for opening and closing or awning transom windows above interior doors to circulate fresh air throughout your home.

With so many options available to customize window energy performance throughout your home it can be confusing. Remember this, select the right type of window style for the window location and specify the finish and size of the glass. If you do these things, you can improve the energy efficiency and comfort of your home.

When you’re planning a remodel don’t get caught in the trap of assigning less importance to these aspects of your home. Instead, know that there are unlimited possibilities for managing the light and climate in your home and build these options into your plans.