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Windows, including the glass panes in doors, lose energy in three ways. First, they allow air to pass around their frames and edges; second, they allow heat to pass through the glass itself, in the process of conduction; third, heat can escape just by shining” out—radiating to the cold outside. You can stop the first kind of loss by caulking and weatherstripping, the second kind by double or triple panes and storm windows, and the third kind by drapes, shades, or other window coverings. If you stand beside your bedroom window on a frosty winter morning, you’ll notice that cold air from outside is leaking into your house at what could be considered an alarming rate. You can actually feel the cold seep in, chilling the area around the window as it falls toward the floor (cold air is heavier than warm air). But a few feet in from the window, the air is warmer and more uniform. What happened to all that cold? You paid to heat it. Reports published by the Texas Energy Extension Service and other investigative organizations indicate that a single pane of clear glass may lose as much as 20 times more heat than a well-insulated wall. If you look around your house at the enormous square footage occupied by very loosely covered holes in the wall (i.e., windows), you can begin to appreciate why your utility bills are so high. and not only do you lose warm air in the winter; you also lose cooled air in summer. So those holes in the wall consume your energy dollars year-round. In fact, any time the temperature inside your house is different from the temperature outside, heat is passing through your windows in whichever direction costs you money! This doesn’t mean that you should board up your windows—you want the sunlight they let in, you want to be able to see the outside world, and frequently you even want some air. But it does suggest that you should take a look at how you can have all the benefits of windows without spending so much money on their energy-eating habits. For simplicity’s sake, let’s just deal with the problem of losing heat in cool weather. When you conserve heating energy at your windows, you will be setting the stage to conserve cooling energy at the same time. Incidentally, in examining some of the causes for your high energy bills and exploring ways to lower them by reducing your home energy consumption, don’t neglect the little items. It’s amazing how many of us who are earnestly concerned about our use of energy con t recognize the importance of such things as the window that was cracked five years ago that no one has ever gotten around to replacing; the window that never shuts tightly because of a loose latch; the long winter minutes a loving mother spends shivering in an open doorway, watching her child trudge off to school through the snowdrifts, while the furnace labors to replace the lost warmth. No amount of caulking, weatherstripping, or other home amendments will reduce your energy consumption if you periodically toss what you have saved out the window. On February 9, 1977, a front page story in the Wall Street Journal indicated that when the outside temperature was 0° F, the temperature on the inside surface of a single-pane window, in a room heated to a normal household temperature, was a chilling 17°. By merely adding glass or plastic storm windows, the temperature on the inside surface of that window was raised to 47° F; and by the further addition of a single sheet of plain freezer wrapping, the inside surface temperature of the window went up to 60° F. Does insulation work? You bet your energy-saving dollar it does. What you have to decide is whether it is cost- effective in your own case—whether the expense of keeping your window warm can be justified by the energy savings in a short enough time to war rant the outlay. • Storm windows: Windows can be insulated in a variety of ways, but the most common and traditional window insulating amendment is the exterior storm window. The term “storm window” often is used loosely to mean any sort of window insulation. Actually, however, a true storm window is a wholly independent sash. It may be entirely removable or permanently installed, but in either case it is separate from the primary window. For our purposes, we will define a storm window as a single layer of clear material that is used to insulate a window, whichever method is used. • Storm doors: Like the true storm window, the traditional storm door is not a material added to an existing door, but rather is a whole, separate unit designed to provide the same sort of extra out side protection for the doorway that storm windows provide in their place. Ordinarily, a storm door is made of a solid material such as aluminum on its bottom half; the top half or two-thirds of the door is glass, held in an aluminum frame. Some storm doors have tracks that allow the glass to slide away leaving a screen for summer cooling. The doors are easy to put up or take down, by removing the standard pins. Next: Plastic Sheeting Storm Windows Prev: Caulking |