Repair or replace

Repair or Replace?

When many homeowners don't realize that repair is an option, full replacement becomes their only focus. Read more about when repair can be a better value for you and your home.

Home / Learn / Repair or Replace

Do You Need a Window Repair or Window Replacement?

There are two major fac­tors that dri­ve this deci­sion — age of the home and sever­i­ty of the fail­ure. Win­dows in old­er homes are the win­dows that should be replaced, NOT a 10 year old house. The claims made by win­dow replace­ment com­pa­nies about ener­gy effi­cien­cy and sav­ing mon­ey on ener­gy bills are based on turn of cen­tu­ry homes with sin­gle pane glass and no weath­er­strip­ping. These promis­es of improved effi­cient­ly are sim­ply false, or at least over-exag­ger­at­ed for what the indus­try would con­sid­er mod­ern day” win­dow tech­nol­o­gy; say for instance any home build after 1980. 

When it comes to the con­struc­tion of the win­dow, lit­tle has changed in 40 years. While glass tech­nol­o­gy has cer­tain­ly come a long way, the gen­er­al con­struc­tion of the typ­i­cal wood win­dow hasn’t improved much at all. Point being, the case can still be made for sash replace­ment and/​or repair because the glass itself can still be brought up to cur­rent tech­nol­o­gy stan­dards, while tear­ing out and replac­ing the entire frame doesn’t gain much at all. A whole brand new win­dow isn’t get­ting you much more than you already have, except of course the feel­ing of get­ting new stuff”. Which is a per­fect­ly fine rea­son to replace all of your win­dows. How­ev­er, most folks don’t have unlim­it­ed funds to get new stuff” every ten years. 

Why Choose Window Replacement?

Replace window

So we’ve looked at a cou­ple good rea­sons to replace; your home is real­ly old, or you just want new stuff. Here are a cou­ple more legit­i­mate rea­sons to replace. 1. Per­haps build­ing codes have changed. Depend­ing on where you live (using coastal areas for exam­ple) any alter­ation to the exte­ri­or requires an upgrade to cur­rent codes. Fire is a good one. While we are mak­ing a strong argu­ment for repair, some­times win­dows just can’t be repaired. Spe­cif­ic parts may be obso­lete and an alter­na­tive is not avail­able. Frame rot can be so severe, specif­i­cal­ly when the decay has reached the inte­ri­or of the home, the struc­tur­al integri­ty of the win­dow unit has been com­pro­mised to the point that replace­ment is the only option.

When Window Repair is the Right Choice

Window rot

Now for 95% of every­one else! Repair is a far more rea­son­able and cost effec­tive option for most home­own­ers when pro­fes­sion­als and supe­ri­or prod­ucts are uti­lized. There are few win­dow fail­ures that a repair method can not cor­rect. Fog­gy glass, check. Rot­ten sash, check. Bro­ken hard­ware, check. Worn weath­er­strip, check. Minor frame rot, check. Hail dam­age, check. Bet­ter glass tech­nol­o­gy, check. All of the most com­mon win­dow issues just list­ed can be cor­rect­ed using a Fen­ster product.

What many home­own­ers don’t ini­tial­ly con­sid­er are the intan­gi­ble” fac­tors of a major home improve­ment project like, tear­ing huge holes in your walls and hop­ing all goes well. While the sales per­son seemed rea­son­ably informed and pro­fes­sion­al, my guess is the guys who actu­al­ly show up to do the work, not so much. What will get dam­aged dur­ing the process? Will the new win­dows even fit? How big will the mess be? Are the new win­dows pre-fin­ished? Who’s doing all of that paint­ing? Oh, your old blinds don’t fit. I thought you would put the trim back on? Nope, extra. Oh, but the old trim doesn’t fit, so all of that needs to be replaced too.

Sash replace­ment takes about 20 min­utes a piece. Whole hous­es can typ­i­cal­ly be switched out in 2 days or less for a 70 – 80% sav­ings. And we didn’t even take the blinds down!

Ready to Get Started? Click here to start your quote today!
Become a ReWindow Partner Learn how to join our growing network of independently owned locations, or search employment opportunities as a sales rep or installer at one of our corporate stores. LEARN MORE