While wood windows are generally very well made vinyl windows run the gamut from a builder grade product designed to fail within years to an extremely well made product designed to compete with the look and performance of a high quality wood window. Since vinyl is a man made product and easily sourced it can be cheaply made and is widely available from a variety of manufacturer’s. Often times our customers are over whelmed with the sheer number of brands available with everyone claiming to have “the best.”
There are three main categories of vinyl windows; builder-grade, mid-grade, and premium/commercial grade windows. Remodel America does not sell builder-grade products which are designed to fail and generally have very poor construction. The windows tend to be bulky, ugly in design, and are made with inferior components. Mid-grade products will have basic necessesaties like fusion welded frames and sashes, thermo-pane glass, virgin-vinyl, constant force balance systems, glass packages with Low e, argon or krypton gas; and cast-aluminum locks. Premium/commercial grade windows will start with all of the basics of a mid-grade window and will be upgraded with features like thicker vinyl frames for commercial use, foam filled frames and/or sashes, hurricane grade wind-load resistance, triple pane glass, designer glass options, slim-line frames that mimic the look of wood windows, and a myriad of niche options.
Who the manufacturer of the window is just as important as the window itself; you want to deal with a major player in the industry. It is most important to deal with a manufacturer that uses top-of-the-line equipment and has a tight manufacturing process. If the production of the window is shoddy then you will have a high number of defects in the products resulting in poorly performing windows. Remodel America prefers to deal with recognized leaders in the vinyl window industry; Soft-Lite and Slocumb are two of our most popular manufacturer’s; both companies are AAMA certified (click here to find out more about certification) and have the best manufacturing equipment in the industry and plants that operate cleanly and efficiently.
Learn more about the different types of windows by visiting this page and learn more about energy ratings in our next post. Don’t want to wait? Start here.
