Should you replace your Aluminum Windows with Vinyl windows?

The Dilema: Should you replace your old double pain aluminum windows with energy efficient vinyl windows? Of course, all the experts quote payback periods and R values but what does it really mean and is it really worth expense???? I banged around the internet, called my local rural electric coop and could not really get any hard data but pretty much the same story over and over. The one thing our guy at the local electric coop did do was to give us a specific window maker to look at and his recommendation to just do it.

We had windows failing - moisture inbetween double panes so you could not see out. I did replace a few windows which is about $100 a glass if you take the sliding door in to the shop or replace it yourself. But the sliding doors were clunky worn out and the screens had been damaged after 25 years of service. We live in a house of glass so we have 6 sliding glass doors and 16 other windows. So it is not cheap.

I priced buying the Certainteed windows myself........ nut that I am I often hire a professional and then work to help to keep costs low. But actually the price of replacement from a distributor was not that much more than me buying them. And lot less of a headache for me.

So we made the plunge and signed a contract and ordered the windows. It was fun to change how some of the windows opened to better suit our use and to make full panes of windows we never opened. We spent $ 250 more for all the windows to be seated on a strip of insulation that reduces sound even more and increase the insualtion or R value.

It is really quite the process. Outside trim is removed and the siding is cut back so the old frame can be removed.

The new windows take some tweaking but slide in. They had to remove all interior trim around the window because there was a change from the thickness of the aluminum window.


Much faster having a whole crew working on a project like this.


Pop in goes the new window. It was sooooooooooo nice to have clean, clear window.

The old window that was here had really fogged up and they would slide with difficulty. Plus aluminum frame collect moisture that drips on wood and rots the frame. Black mold forms on the frames inside the house and that is deadly. A few more years and we would have had to pay for framing to be replaced as well thus driving the cost $$$$$$$ rocketing.

Fortunately the frames and the old windows can be recycled. Our installers dad uses them on his rental homes. cool.

So did we think it was a good move to replace the windows????

ABSOLUTELY!!!!

We are so impressed with all the changes and improvement.

1. Quieter - it is amazing how the house is quieter. You do not hear annoying outside sounds, traffic noise, big trucks rumbling by, etc.

2. More even temperature - Our main source of heat has been wood burning in our woodstove and we use a whole house fan for cooling the house. So we are more aware of temperature flucuations in outside temperature. It is amazing how much more stable the temperature is inside the house.

3. Maintains warmth in cold temperatures - we get chilly and cold nights in Oregon in the fall. The afternoon temp is warm and comfortable so you really do not want to start up the woodstove. It was amazing to see how warm the house stayed and just maintained a much warmer temperature. We did not even have to use an electric heater. This is a pic of the temperature at about 7 am this fall.
24 degrees warmer inside with NO HEAT.


4. House is much cooler inside during hot outside temperatures. We cool the house down with the whole house fan using the cool Oregon night air. The picture below is mid afternoon when it is 95F degrees in the shade meaning that in the sun temp is 100F or higher. By late afternoon the inside temp had risen some but it was very cool and very comfortable. As you can see we drop bamboo shades on the sun side to keep out the burning heat. Our summer electric bill is $ 116 a month with all the cooking and computers and this simple cooling system.

whole house fan - read more about this great way to cheaply cool your home

30 F + degrees cooler 9 + hours later after shutting off the fan and closing up the hosue in the afternoon with no additional cooling.

This is the temp after many chilly nights and cool days but the house is naturally warmer and keeps a much more even temp. Still 10 degrees warmer insde even though we have not been running any kind of heat.



The trippy part is that we have only burned our woodstove a few days this fall which has been quite chilly and rainy. We use a small electric oil filled heater with box fan and the house is a very comfy 68F. So easy.

So yes we highly recommend replacing your old aluminum windows with vinyl.

Now it is time to paint the whole house with ICI Dulux paint! yeaaaaaaaaaaaa

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Winter update

We have gotten into colder weather = freezing at night. The house is still 20 degrees warmer outside with no heat. With a touch of one oil filled electric heater it stays around 64 F.

I have started using the woodstove the house stays 65 F to 70F with the air shut down so that the logs are just smoldering. I would guess that we will use half the firewood of a normal winter because the vinyl windows.

I would think that the vinyl windows will significantly reduce energy costs for most insulated homes and pay for themselves in energy savings in a matter of years.

Plus you are much more comfortable with a stable and steady temperature. Good for you and good for the planet.

Selective Logging Near the House - Oregon

Well some of the trees were my pets that I have watered and fertilized for 22 years now. But they have grown so massive and being so close to the house that they are dangerous in a big storm or a a raging fire. Some were actually leaning towards the house. We had a number removed by the shed to make that area safer and easier to move things around. It has been quite a job even though we hired Charlie and company to log - they do it on shares. With excavator the work was really fast and there was a lot of clean up - fir trees have a lot limbs. The giant trees were Grand Fir and the others are Douglas Fir.

We have so much more light around our house now. It will be much brighter all year long as well as much safer in a storm on wildfire.


Charlie has helped us with several harvests. Here he is cutting my baby tree, it was kind of hard to watch but amazing at the same time. It was over 42" in diameter and had grown a lot in my 22 years of watering and feeding it.
His helper is driving a wedge in the cut to get the momentum of the tree falling in the right direction.
Charlie threaded the needle and dropped the tree perfectly so other trees were not damaged.

Boooooooommmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. The ground really shook.
Charlie cut it off nice and level so we could put............ put................ put............. yes, you guessed it a statue on it. HHHHHHHHHHHHAAAAAAAAAHAHAAAAAAA
They run a tape to measure the log for the optimum length for the mill - get the most wood and the most $$$. You really only make $$$ if you harvest a large area and send 15 truck loads to the mills.
Here is the wee one for size comparison to my pet tree.

Someone is feeling the spirit of the timber faller.............. DUCK.



What an amazing machine. A great tool for harvesting on ground with a slight elevation. Does a super clean up job. Dan is an expert operator.
Here are the logs ready to be hauled to the mill. A truck comes with a loader. They are cut by computer and head to a Home Depot store near you. haha
lots more light around the house now. kind of like clearing the park from right near the house.
I want to build a covered space behind the shed to store firewood so it is nice and dry. In this part of Oregon you can NEVER have enough dry space. It is humorous to have people move up from California in the summer when the weather is sunny and beautiful and then see them plant a for sale sign in their yard in Feb. when we have been socked in with clouds and rain for 90 days and counting.




Charlie is cutting the tree. The front side was knotched and the knotched removed. Now they are cutting and driving a wedge in to get it to tilt towards where they want it to fall.

see the video on youtube
the Final Wedge - look out Janai

Charlie makes the final cut. He motions to tell Janai to move over around the side of the house near me to be safer.

The big tree falls hard and loud - having problems getting this video to upload - oh well

This is the final drop. A huge Boooommm and the ground really shook as it hit the driveway. Some limbs break and are driving about 2 feet into the earth from the force of the falling tree.

I heard that Oregon Forestry said that if a person owned 250 acres you can selectively harvest timber and forever and make about $60,000 a year. Selective harvest is when you pick just some trees out of a stand or forest. You leave smaller trees to grow and be harvested in future years. Such thinning makes for a really healthy forest. Ours was nasty when we bought it - absolutely dead underneath with nothing growing. By harvesting a few trees here and there we have a very healthy stand with lots of plants growing underneath. Great habitat for all the critters - bear, cougar, elk, deer, racoon, etc.


There a few really steep places on mountains is where clear cutting is the only way to log. But it is way overused and a ton of soil is washed down off the moutain mucking up the streams and rivers. Oh well, you take care of what you can.

The undergrowth in our forest is so intense and huge I call it the jungle. I have to carve out little paths so we can walk through it. Man the deer really appreciate that as I can tell from their tracks but then so do the cougars when they are hungry for some fresh deer.

Hmmmmmm the Killing Zone grows

Well living in the middle of the forest is really kind of a battle. You have to keep the brush and blackberries from taking over. Mice and rats think you have built wonderful places for them to live. Last year we spent over $ 700 on 2 car repairs from mice nesting in the heater fan area of the car - that was a drag.
So we got 2 cats and a new cat showed up so things improved with less mice damage. Of course, cats love to bring little trophies and deposit them around the outside of the house. Yuck. But it is a good thing to protect where we live.
Our beloved dog, Akita, passed away this last year - 2006.
While she was still with a us, we got Bast as a puppy. She is malamute, husky and wolf. We have spent alot of time and training with her. She has become a wonderful companion and her job is to defend the home, garden and land. Well.......... she is the most incredible hunter. I was thrilled to see her bring down those nasty rats.......... but unfortunately she also harvests anything else she can nab.
Living here for over 20 years, I have fed the wild birds. We have quite a few that come around the house. But now with this new animal squadron creating a kill zone around our house, we are left with only 2 kinds of wild creatures - The Quick and The Dead.
Bast is so proud of her work and our deck is her trophy case............ ewwwwwww.
I can only hope that the skunk you wanders down from the mountain in the spring has the good sense to avoid our place or our deck will really smell.

Snow Funnnnnnnnnn

Sadly the climate here in Oregon has been getting warmer and warmer. Finally today we were blessed with a wonderful bit of snow. It was wet and clung heavy to each little branch. My bamboo was bent almost to the ground. I had to shake it off so that it would not break if more snow fell. We worked furiously and took off for a nice time on the lake.

We used to get snow regularly in the winter. The old timers say they trudged knee deep in the snow to feed the livestock in the vallery - we have never seen that. The area is so warm now that some insects are killing off some of our trees - bark beetles in the white fir trees.

Our lake used to freeze over with a nice little crust of ice. We would load the kids up and play ice breaker crunching in the aliminum canoe around the lake. Slices of ice thrown frisbee style across the ice would tinkle like the chiming of fine cut glass.

Oh well we are witnesses to an amazing era on the planet.

Enjoy the pics and the break from the routine of your day.