January 26, 2014
Meet Mrs. Gauntlet, she owns a nice home in the suburbs of York, Pa. Her home is a quaint cape cod with original 1967 single pane windows. The windows have been well maintained (caulked and painted) over the years and still look great. However, her home is drafty, has high energy bills, and she assumes the culprit is her original single pane windows. The windows are old, and she has several rooms in her home that are cold in the winter time, and warm in the summer. Mrs. Gauntlet needs to replace her windows right? No! It's mainly a myth that you have to replace the windows in your home to achieve lower utility bills and comfortable rooms.
We told Mrs. Gauntlet, like we tell all homeowners, the culprit is not your windows, and no, you don't need to spend thousands of dollars replacing them. We continued on with the energy audit to find evidence of extreme convective heat loss, that made certain rooms very cold and very warm, but it wasn't the windows. Windows are mainly aesthetics. They help make your home pleasing to the eye, add character and provide natural light and scenery.
We do hundreds of energy audits a year, and the average savings from going from the worst single pane window, to a high efficient double pane window are $4.10-$12.30, depending on your heating source. Let's do the math: Avg. Window Installed $400 Annual Energy Savings $12.30 Payback= 32 years ".....But I have had many window companies tell me how much money I will save if I replace these old original windows!" They lie. Did they even look at your energy bills? Mrs. Gauntlet avoided an $8,000 mistake. If you are considering replacing your windows, have an energy audit completed first.
You can avoid costly mistakes like Mrs. Gauntlet. It is the only way to properly diagnose a home's current performance. York Home Performance uses scientific equipment to diagnose the issues in your home and the knowledge and experience to fix them.