This week I continued replacing the old wood windows that came initially with my house. As I found out last year, none of the windows in my house (Model Home Version 0.1 for our area) were very well insulated (if at all), which in itself suggests the “investment” in new windows will be a good choice, however, if we ignore the shoddy craft of the builders of my house, the question arises, does it make sense to replace old windows in a home?
In my case, I think it is an easy yes:
- Aesthetically the old windows were not very pretty, and would be a sticking point should we want to sell this house. Many house buyers would see the old windows as they walked into the house and would dismiss the house off-hand, without even looking closely at the rest of the house (which isn’t in great shape in other ways, but that is for another story).
- The continued up keep of old wooden windows is an investment in time and labour I was not willing to continue with (well Mrs. C8j did the painting and upkeep, but I am pretty sure she agrees with my evaluation).
- The fact that the new windows are an upgrade in performance ( for keeping out sunlight, and heat) will help with cooling the house in the summer (the lack of insulation in the old windows make this point even higher in importance), and keep in the house in the winter.
I am not going to do the math on when the windows will “pay for themselves” because I view those claims as a bit trite, the windows needed replacing, and I don’t think, in this case, it is a frivolous home expenditure. Still have more money to drop into the remaining windows, but this needs to be done as well for now.
The latest Consumer Reports notes that a lot of people mistakenly think window upgrades will lower energy costs the most. Invisible things like sealing air leaks and adding attic insulation are better. So energy considerations should be secondary.
In my case it was an insulation issue as well, but yes, insulating walls and attics and cutting out air loss points are important too.
My next door neighbor has windows that look like this and I think he’s getting them all replaced. Ours are vinyl and a few years newer so they’re still in pretty good shape. I do have a couple that are starting to get mist in between the panes, but they’ll have to wait until after the roof gets done next year.