Within the next month or so my house will be receiving a very long overdue improvement. Needless to say I’m rather excited to be updating our windows. We’ve only been in the house a little over two years and we are working our way through some long needed maintenance/improvements.
You see, the house is part of a planned neighborhood built in the late 1960’s. The past forty years, from what I can tell have added a sun room, a deck (both poorly), replaced the roof and eradicated/warded off possible termites. This has left several other things original to the house, which for the time frame probably shouldn’t be.
When we moved in we did a small amount of analysis to see what we could update that would give us the biggest improvement for our improvement dollar. I did not like what the local energy company gave me as a monthly energy use/cost estimate. We replaced, or for all intents and purposes, added insulation to our attic. Went from an R3 rating to an R60, and believe we cut that in half. The next step was to update our house-original heater, and the 20 year old air conditioner. This let us run the house at a more comfortable level in the summer; we enjoyed a slight decrease there.
This left us believing that our High Efficiency HVAC was only more efficiently heating/cooling the outside world than out house. We went for quality over price, with triple pane, and low E Argon gas. I am not sure the scope of the improvements that will be reaped from the replacement in sheer decrease in monthly gas and electric usage. Unfortunately these will be going in just post what are traditionally our coldest months. On the other hand, it’ll be nice to have all windows able to be opened and with screens.
I’m sure there will be some improvement – going from aluminum to vinyl in the least should have a positive impact – but I’m still excited that we are taking care of this.
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