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Wonderful Wood Windows!

Here in central Ohio we’ve had our first real blast of winter over the last couple of days…snow flurries, temperatures in the 20s, teeth-chattering winds, the whole nine yards. And, if you live in an old house with wood windows (like I do), you’ve likely felt that wintry reminder when passing by one of those windows.
So, maybe it was just a wintertime coincidence (or destiny) that one of the first emails from a concerned Ohioan to Heritage Ohio in 2016 brought a plea for help, requesting assistance to convince the owner of a historic building not to dump their original wood windows.
As you can imagine, this is one of the most common email discussion roads we go down. Too often, this is what we find: building owners ready to toss their original sash because they don’t function. The sash are painted shut; the sash, if opened, don’t stay up (the sash cords broke long ago); or, as in my case, when you walk by the window in the dead of winter, you can feel the breeze inside the building. In that case, weatherstripping is the issue.
While solving any of these window issues isn’t especially difficult, too often, the owner freezes once that thought, “the hassle of repair,” goes through their mind, and they reach for their tablet to google “window replacement.”
There has been a lot of marketing from the replacement window industry extolling the virtue of replacement windows. When it comes to windows, we’ve gone through a good 40 years of purging the word “maintenance” from our collective consciousness, while the window replacement industry has trained people to believe that the “hassle” of repair is a fate worse than death.
To counter this, we preservationists have begun promoting the value of preserving original windows with groups such as the Window Preservation Alliance. And the National Trust has recently put a greater focus on quantifying the value of wood windows, why preserve, and how best to preserve. Their report, Saving Windows, Saving Money, has been especially helpful for us. The report quantifies the energy savings, cost, and return on investment for a variety of window treatments, including weatherstripping, installing an exterior storm, and installing a new high performance replacement window. And guess what they found? DIY weatherstripping offers an average 31% return on investment, while DIY high performance replacement windows offer a 3% return on investment.

That shiny stuff Rebecca Torsell is nailing onto the jamb may be bronze, but when it comes to energy efficiency, it's worth its weatherstripping weight in gold.

That shiny stuff Rebecca Torsell is nailing onto the jamb may be bronze, but when it comes to energy efficiency, it’s worth its weatherstripping weight in gold.


And this is exactly why YOP offering their hands-on window repair training last year in Columbus was so valuable: giving homeowners the skills to tackle DIY projects such as window repair and weatherstripping SAVES MONEY, while saving the architectural integrity of their homes, while saving money on the heating bill.
Now if only we had the billion dollar marketing budget to get THAT message out!

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