Our neighborhoods are going vinyl, and I\u2019m not referring to LP\u2019s.<\/p>\n
The architectural heritage of our historic San Diego is under assault! Look around. Vinyl windows with ersatz colonial grids are infecting our pretty, early 1900\u2019s homes everywhere! This home \u201cimprovement\u201d trend is rampant and insidious, it\u2019s spreading like a disease, and it\u2019s defiling the beauty of the charming buildings around us.<\/p>\n
Classic and uniquely styled wood windows are a signature architectural feature of the Spanish revival and craftsman homes that grace our neighborhoods. Windows are the \u201ceyes\u201d of a home. Deterioration of these windows has led owners to replace them with standard, look-alike, factory-made vinyl substitutes. This is particularly common in apartment buildings where owners have been succumbing to promised \u201cenergy efficiency,\u201d \u201clasting beauty\u201d and cost-effectiveness. These promises are made by profit-conscious salesmen in an industry that has swollen from 10 manufacturers to over 3,000 in 15 years. It\u2019s debatable as to whether they are a cost-effective solution to aging windows, although they certainly do look cheap. They start out a promising lily white and after some years turn yellow, not unlike the shade of underarm stains in your favorite white t-shirt. Nice, huh?<\/p>\n
They never look right in our historic buildings. And beyond their negative aesthetics, vinyl windows are unsustainable. They are a petrochemical product. Their much vaunted \u201cinsulating core\u201d, between two layers of glass, can fog up and, once this happens, they will have to be replaced again. Claims of these miracle windows \u201clasting forever\u201d are clearly undocumented, as they have only existed for 20 years. Please read this link: (see: http:\/\/www.eastrow.org\/articles\/vinylwindows.html).<\/p>\n
The solution lies not in dumping the old wood windows in a landfill, but in fixing them. Hire a local craftsman. Keep them painted.Take pride in them. They are pretty and deserve it. Wood windows can be restored and, if maintained, can unquestionably last another hundred years, or more. Let\u2019s not violate San Diego\u2019s architecture with vinyl.<\/p>\n
\u2014Mark Whitehead, Mission Hills Our neighborhoods are going vinyl, and I\u2019m not referring to LP\u2019s. The architectural heritage of our historic San Diego is under assault! Look around. Vinyl windows with ersatz colonial grids are infecting our pretty, early 1900\u2019s homes everywhere! This home \u201cimprovement\u201d trend is rampant and insidious, it\u2019s spreading like a disease, and it\u2019s defiling the […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":726,"featured_media":244587,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"11555","_seopress_titles_title":"Letter to the Editor: The Vinyl Replacement Window Epidemic","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11551,11593,11552,11555],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-244589","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-no-images","category-opinion","category-uptown-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244589","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/726"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=244589"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244589\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/244587"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=244589"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=244589"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=244589"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n\u2014Robyn Dunn, Hillcrest<\/em><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"