por Michael Bueno
Columnista SDUN

Is any house part more endangered than the double-hung wood window? Assailed on all sides by wind, rain, sunlight and angry cats, this beleaguered old house essential now faces an even crueler enemy: telemarketers. Scarcely a day goes by that I don’t receive a call from one of these misguided forces of nature assuring me that I can save the environment, vanquish dry rot and termites, free myself from the power grid, live forever and smell better—and get a government rebate—if only I would let loose of that crazy notion that a 100-year-old window design belongs in my 100-year-old house.

The replacement window telemarketers’ pitch wouldn’t be so seductive if it didn’t make so much sense, sort of. After all, there’s no getting around the reality that wood windows do wear out. Ropes break. Putty dries up. Paint peels and varnish cracks. Wood gets wet, dry rot takes hold, termites move in, everything turns to dust. For the old house owner, nothing lasts forever, except hope—particularly the hope that something (windows, for example) can be “maintenance free.”

Of course, the demise of the wood window has been predicted before. In the 1920s, it was steel windows. By the 1960s, aluminum was the wave of the future. Both were promoted for their longevity, low maintenance and modernity. But steel windows rusted (usually shut), and aluminum windows corroded, the sliders got racked and the louvers leaked.

Since 2003, Shawn Woolery of San Diego Sash has been replacing aluminum windows with historic replicas of his own manufacture. Today, about 75 percent of his business is replacing replacements. Woolery builds old-fashioned windows the old-fashioned way, sometimes on old-fashioned equipment, using the same techniques, materials and wood that were used when your old house was new. He estimates he’s done at least 1,000 in the past seven years. On a recent visit to his shop in the College Area, it was easy to imagine that he’s done more, since there appeared to be another 100 sashes in various stages of completion, some for the Navy, some for private homes in the Uptown area and some for houses I was familiar with because I had recently done refinishing work for the homeowners. (In the interest of transparency, I should mention that I often stain and varnish the windows San Diego Sash builds and installs.)

So how long can a wood window last?

“If kept maintained, wood windows can last hundreds of years,” Woolery said. “Buildings in Europe, churches and castles that have been there for hundreds of years, still have the original windows.”

Maintenance concerns are driving the new wave of window replacement, with aluminum-clad windows from manufacturers like Marvin, Anderson, Jeld-Wen and Pella. These windows are marvels of engineering, with springs and levers and metal hinges and nylon cords and some plastic parts that I don’t even know how to describe because they are so outside the realm of everyday human experience. Among the features: extensive weather stripping, a tilt mechanism that allows homeowners to clean the outside of the window without ever going outside, and various gases and tints that prevent everything we once thought was healthy—sunshine, fresh air, a slight change in temperature—from getting inside the house. Among the drawbacks—they’re expensive, from $10,000 to $25,000 for a small bungalow. As for esthetics, even the best replacement windows don’t really look like the genuine article. And they don’t qualify for the Mills Act.

For some, the real attraction of aluminum-clad replacement windows is the potential energy savings. The U.S. government believes strongly enough in replacement windows that it is subsidizing the entire industry with tax breaks for homeowners. Curiously, another branch of the U.S. government (in the form of the U.S. Army Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory) concluded in 1996 that the energy savings aren’t very significant when comparing “properly restored wood windows with a typical replacement unit.” More recently, Michael Blasnik, an independent energy efficiency consultant, looked into the energy savings provided by replacement windows.

“The numbers just aren’t as high as you would hope to see,” he told Fine Home Building magazine. “There is actually little data that support the idea that replacement windows save any significant amount of energy in typical homes.”

Blasnik took his data directly from the energy bills of a group of upstate New York homeowners who had installed replacement windows.

“The findings were less than impressive,” Fine Home Building said. “On average, the homeowners saved about $40 on their annual heating bills.”

The payback period? About 250 years, give or take a decade.

Of course, there are other attractions to modern windows. They come with a label, for example, citing their solar-heat-gain coefficient ratings and the U-value.

“Our customers want guaranteed performance, and a label gives them that satisfaction—something you can’t get with old wood windows,” said Brian Hedlund, a product manager at Jeld-Wen. “It’s important to look at the impact window replacements have on the value of the home and its comfort. It’s difficult to put a definite price tag on those things.”

In my experience, these intangibles are important to homeowners. They often cite a sense of security and safety, knowing their windows are new, sturdy and covered by a warranty. After all, windows are also points of entry into the space we call home. Worries about rain, cold, heat and fumes can get mixed up with worries about terrorists, child molesters, skunks, raccoons, spiders and all those strange people who couldn’t get in to Comic Con. If somehow a sturdy, high-tech, argon-gas-filled, dual-glazed, aluminum, wood and vinyl machine can bring a little peace of mind into this world, maybe it’s worth it. Or maybe not.

“One of the things I tell homeowners to take into consideration when it comes to replacement windows is to make sure that you’re OK with the way the house is going to look after it’s done” Woolery said. “For me, it’s an esthetic part of the house; it’s vital to keeping the integrity of the house. Wood windows just look good. When you replace your wood window sashes with aluminum-clad, you’re kind of taking the soul out of the house.”

For a list of window resources, e-mail me at [email protected]. To contact San Diego Sash, call 546-4912.