Superinstulated windows
 

At some point I really need to rip the walls down on my 2nd floor and insulate them. At the same time, it would be great to replace the single pane windows up there. Of course, I was thinking of using a highly insulated window. I hadn't been doing any actual research on this, but I stumbled upon this link in an advertisement over on EM today. Looks like a window place that can provide some pretty darn high r-value windows. Up to R11 if you don't need it to open, and 7.7 if you go with a casement type! Not too shabby.

Alpen high performance products

My question is, do you guys know of any other suppliers of windows I could look into?

any pricing informaition? When I got ours replaced, it was quite expensive, but the windows made a big difference... the difference between having to use the AC to keep the house cool enough to manage during our Alabama summers (100degF+) and just opening/closing the windows to regulate temp. We went through Champion, the windows were just too much better. otherwise we would have gone with Window World, who claims to have super efficient glass, but the overall windows are not as good. Not sure if either company is around in Wisconsin.

The Serious Windows (now Alpen) are the best windows I am aware of.

I just contacted a local distributor of Serious Windows last night. I should have a quote in my email sometime today for 30"x60" casement windows so we can get an idea on their pricing. I'm planning on installing two of them in my office which has been in the works of a remodel now for months. Even if they're on the expensive side I think I'm going to go with them just to give them a shot. As I mentioned in the first post I need to replace about six windows in my upstairs as I go through and insulate the walls. If these work out to my liking I'll probably be using them up there as well.

A lot of our discussions and the energy reduction goals we are shooting for make Passive House standards relevant.

The European market is more mature than in the US simply because energy prices are about double.

As far as I know, Serious Window is one of the better manufacturers in the US.

But one window that has gotten higher ratings is:

Integrity Windows and Doors - Integrity Windows

Also try:

• Thermotech Fiberglass Fenestration, Home of the most energy efficient windows in the world
• Optiwin Windows
• UltraTherm | Uniwin Windows & Doors
• Andersen A-Series - Performance

To compare apples to apples, you may need to convert from SI measurements to US, so here is a slider to use:

http://www.passivehouse.us/passiveHo...0Converter.swf

-AC_Hacker

We have one Serious dealer in western MA and I got some quotes from him recently. As I recall it was around $40 a sq. Ft. For inoperable and closer to 50 or 60 for operable. Pretty damn expensive. Personally I'm just going with double pane and adding inserts. That's what most of the builders I know do.

Passive House Windows Discussion...
 

BTW, I came across a pretty good discussion thread on windows over at Passive House US:

passivehouse.us • View topic - Passive House Windows

-AC_Hacker

Well I got my quote and I about fell over. I was expecting $400-600, nah, think twice that. I'm still thinking about it though. I would really like to see first hand how nice these are. But I'm obviously finding it very hard to justify. I may get quotes on the 525 series to see how that effects the price. They're still ~30% better insulated than a high end Anderson (which would probably be my alternative if I don't go with these).

High Performance Windows Volume Purchase Program
 

Well Daox,

While you're still reeling from sticker shock, you might as well check out this government High Performance Windows Volume Purchase Program.

The idea is that Uncle Sam incentivized some companies to make high performance windows in a volume large enough to create economy of scale.

Might work for you.

-AC_Hacker

Yeah. A regular sized window from Serious is about $ 900. Come on! For a window? You can buy really nice double pane winserts for $50 a piece.

Are these the plastic film inserts?

-AC_Hacker

No. They are pine frames with plastic on either side with qlon around the edges to create an air tight seal. There is a company in a city about 20 Mi south of me (Springfield) that has a small shop making these things. It's entirely staffed by low income individuals and the unemployed. You can make these things for a lot less yourself though.... but you have to actually do it, which can be a PITA depending on your schedule and level of motivation. I myself swore that I'd have some made by the winter. Oops. No inserts yet. Hopefully next year. All you do it rip #2 pine to make a frame, put a supporting brace in the middle and kerf the perimeter with the table saw for the qlon. Your "pane" can be either that window film (on each side) or something a little more durable. Just make sure it's all air tight. Is it going to perform as well as one of these high tech billionaire windows? Probably not. If you have a small house and are thrifty with everything else How long is it going to take to see a return on the $35,000 windows compared to the $8,000 windows? I did the math when I moved into this house and assuming that I live to be 90 and the cost of energy doesn't rise (yeah right) I would never see a return on replacing the windows which are already installed. The only place I'm going to get 3 pane glass is for two picture windows I have. They are inoperable. I'm going to source 3 pane glass from a glass dealer, not some crazy company like Serious or Thermotech, and frame them in my self using a liberal amount of spray foam. If they were already 2 pane replacement windows I probably wouldn't do it but they are the original single pane jobs so replacement makes sense there. Really all decent casements allow about the same amount of air movement. I've seen this plenty of times with blower door testing. At least enough to convince me. Just replace a couple Sq. Ft. of 2 pane glass with R 40 wall and call it a day. Every foot of glass you can replace with super insulated wall is a point for humanity in my book. I'm fortunate in that the clever 1950's builder who made my house did some clever things like: double drywall on ALL walls, low ceilings and small windows.

Say, S-F...

I was talking to a friend of mine who had a couple of double-low E fixed window in his living room. He got the windows made to fit the spaces he had. He just got the glass, with no frames. He said it wasn't so expensive that way.

Such an idea!

-AC

I considered helping someone with single pane windows replace a broken window before and knew that single pane glass was easy to find. Where do we find a glass company to source triple pane glass from? I'd like to do this because the largest window in my house outside of the patio door(which also needs to be replaced), is the large picture window in the front of the house that has a bad seal and the inside of the pane is dirty from the fog that filled the cavity, condensed, and then dried over and over again. I have a feeling it isn't performing much better than a single pane like that and would like to replace it but it is a big window and would be pricey.

At my mother's house the people who installed her siding and windows couldn't find windows to fit some non-square openings and they managed to get some custom-made glass to fit in the space last fall and that was the first I ever saw that happen and didn't know it was an option until then. I'd imagine labor costs were probably more than the window costs, but DIY changes those cost factors. :)

I have yet to begin looking for such glass. I have a friend who owns a huge framing company who has told me that a "good glass dealer" can get triple pane glass and that they get this kind of thing often. That's about as far as my knowledge goes.

Hi,
You might consider a more or less standard R3, double pane, low-e window coupled with a well designed thermal shade.

We did this one:
Bottom-Up Insulating Shades for Light and Insulation -- Our R8.3 Window

The combination of the multiple layers plus the edge tracks and a good fit along the bottom makes for (I think) about a doubling of the R value up to R6 ish. About $150 for a 36 by 54 ish window -- but since you would probably have some kind of shades anyway, its only the increment over a "regular" shade that should be charged to the energy saving.

We liked the results so much on this one window that we did all the windows along the front of the house and our big kitchen window with the same kind of bottom up/top down shades with energy tracks.

We like the bottom-up/top-down in that it lets up look out the top half of the window while still insulating the bottom half.

Gary

Check out Home they are finally releasing there product this year. It is a layer you can add to glass that will tint the window based on the temp differance inside and outside. It will not help with keeping it warm in the winter but will help in the summer.

It is the trapped air that provides the insulation, and I've heard that the biggest space that works is about 5/8-3/4". Less than this provides less insulation, and more than this doesn't provide more insulation because the air starts to circulate because of the thermal flow.

So you can't just put double or triple layers of glass into the muntins that are designed for single panes. If you can fit 2 layers in, then great, but the air space is probably less than optimal.

Hi,
The graph I saw showed a peak insulation value at about 3/4 inch gap, but the drop off for narrower and larger gaps was quite gradual all the way out 3 inches. I'll see if I can find it again.

I guess I don't see why you can't put multiple transparent layers in spaced at a half inch to a couple inches not get an R value increment for each layer -- its the same thing that commercial triple pane windows do?


Edit: The Passive Solar Energy Book, Mazria pg 365 gives R1.01 for both 3/4 inch and 4 inch air gaps.

http://www.coloradoenergy.org/procor...f/r-values.htm shows
" 1/2" to 4" approximately 1.00 "

Could not find the graphs I saw before.

Gary

Thats an excellant list to have Gary. Thanks
Geo

An issue I am having finding super HE windows, or any window, is ones that have high solar gain glazing for south passive solar windows. May just go with double glazed with high R window covers of some design. It would take a lot of DIY heat to repay 1,000. dollar windows.

High Performance Windows Volume Puirchase...
 

Drake,

There's a govt. program to help provide economy of scale to the high performance windows market.

Here's the concept:

High Performance Windows Volume Purchase: For Residential Buyers

...and here's a page that is a front end to a database query that will tell you what manufacturers are participating in this program. Not all of the windows made by these manufacturers are part of the program, so you need to identify which windows will work for you and stick with that window.

R-5 Windows Volume Purchase : Highly Insulating Windows Volume Purchase

Good luck, it can be done.

-AC_Hacker

Though this program may lower the cost of HE windows I can find if any are available with High solar gain coefficient glazing that is best for passive solar design. HSGC windows are getting very hard to get. They are great windows for all sides of building but southern, if you are looking for as much free sun as possible.

I thought that Energy Star guidelines required that the SHGC be limited. There was a Star Tribune article a few years back that said to skip the Energy Star windows on the south side so you can get the solar gain in the winter since that is where most of our climate control energy goes, heating and to use the energy star windows for the rest of the house. I'm not sure if all of that is accurate at all since I thought the Minnesota St Fair guys who did their passive house used Serious Windows, I figured they qualified as energy star. SHGC was 0.5 I think.

In the HE window incentive programs passive solar is getting left out. I think the passive in some designs is not referring to passive solar gain. More the idea of a building shell that lose as little heat as possible created by mechanical means. I am not that surprised that the cheapest, cost effective, independent form of heat gain(even if not 100%) not being promoted.

For those near British Columbia, you may want to compare Cascadia Windows and Doors. They have some HE triples with fiberglass frames, and high solar gain models.
Cascadia Windows | Technology | Energy Ratings

Hi -- If you are looking for a good way to examine the tradeoff between solar gain and heat loss on specific windows, the RESFEN program (free) is good: LBNL Window & Daylighting Software -- RESFEN

It does a full hour by hour simulation for your climate and it includes solar heat gain and window orientation.

Gary

Have no need to calculate what good passive solar design can do as existing cabin warms to 50/60 degrees on sunny days even on subzero days with no other heat source with older standard double glazed windows. The challenge is to store and minimize loss of that gained FREE heat cost effectively as simple tech as possible. Well designed window can be helpful with that if glazed right. Related item that I haven't found much info on is super high R exterior doors.

I'd be very interested to see what you come up with here.

I did find a photo of a German Passivehaus door:


...and also this construction detail drawing:


Drake,

Are you handy with tools?

-AC_Hacker

So it's basically a normal foam core door with another surface for a second seal?

If the normal seal doesn't fail, then having a second seal doesn't seem to be much of an advantage. My front door has a U-value of 0.12. 0.12 is an R-value of 8.33. If you want a piece of glass in your door that will go down dramatically. If we wanted higher R-value, I'd have to say that we might need a thicker door. Either that or you could add a storm door to the outside that seals well and has some insulating value as some efficient options do exist. This would probably be a better bet than the passivehouse door on its own and likely much cheaper.

Looks to me like a fiberglass insulation. Wouldn't be that hard to make but I won't ever have a wood exterior door on a southern exposure again. Had one and had to revarnish it every year. The direct sun was very hard on it. As most SI homes have thicker than standard walls a 3 or 4" thick foam core door would be doable. Fiberglass frame and cover would be ideal.

I think they are creating an air space for insulation. It may seem like a very small detail, but lots of small details really do add up.

Since they pay 2x for energy compared to us, they're quite motivated.

-AC

After talking with a bunch of people about windows I ended up ordering a pair of Serious Windows the other day for my office remodel. The remodel of the office is kind of my trial run of what I will be doing to my upstairs which has single pane windows and virtually no insulation. For this room I kind of wanted to go all out. So, I went with their 925 series which is the 2nd highest model they have. They are the high solar heat gain version since I'm adding the windows to the room to brighten it up. They are 30" x 60" casement windows. The r-value is 6.3 which is about roughly twice what a normal energy star window is. The cost was very high, just over $1k per window. I haven't bothered even trying to calculate ROI vs a different window. I just kept thinking about things and these windows could very well be here in another 50 years. In any case, I'm looking forward to compairing these windows with my existing newer windows in the house. I'll be sure to snap a bunch of pictures when I get them and when I'm installing them.

Yikes, the best of the best windows are definitely expensive. I've had a little day dream about me walking around the house in December stuffing 2" XPS (R10) into the window cavities with the outside covered in a white or colored bedsheet somehow fashioned make it look like drapes from the outside. Cheaper than windows and complete privacy but no solar heat gain. My energy auditor said that typical double pane energy star windows, even on the south side would lose more heat on a 24 hours than could be gained during the day and that even an R13 wall assembly with less window area is a better bet. I'm curious what R value(actually U value) of window and what level of solar gain is needed to balance this out with the limited sun in northern US or Canada, colder night outdoor temperatures and limited thermal mass to store the gained heat for more passive application.

I'm also curious about high SHGC windows and what you do in the summer until you can grow deciduous shade. I wouldn't mind 'forced/mechanical shade' but when the noon/evening sunny side of your house is facing the street putting shutters, shades, or awnings over the windows would make a house look like the odd one in the neighborhood. I was dedicated to the thought of mounting acrylic with tinted sheet or something over my sunny side windows in the summer but realized that it would be over $200 for just the living room and I wasn't sure how well that would work out but after testing aluminum foil over my port southern side windows in the master bedroom it seemed to cut the heat in that room dramatically with the door shut. 5 degrees lower during the peak sun period from one day to the next with roughly the same cloudless sun and temperatures. Looked unsightly from the outside but I kept them up for two months since I have trees that block the view of those windows from the street but aren't tall enough to block the light coming in. This whole XPS over the windows thing is a thought that is gaining traction, even if it is only a week long trial for the week predicted to be the hottest here. Am I crazy?

The house out here my friend made which has gotten a lot of publicity due to how efficient it's turned out to be has polyiso shades which are air tight. It's just a wooden frame with polyiso in it and covered with some fabric the owner thinks is attractive. She hangs it on the wall next to the window during the day.

Hey AC_Hacker, that door mockup is pretty interesting. I had been planning on buying new doors but I could make that. It's plywood. You could make the door out of polyiso and plywood. Glass can be sourced from a good glass dealer. (About that, I just got a quote of $272 each for the triple pane glass for my 4' 6" x 4' 6" picture windows as opposed to something like $800 each from Serious. WTF?) I imagine that making a crazy, nuts, balls to the wall super insulated door might actually be cheaper than buying a regular fiberglass Jeld Wen door.

Well, I just talked to a rep from this distributor of passivehaus doors in NY. They seem to be the only place selling this kind of thing in the US. Their low end doors are a bargain at $6,000 although I've got my eye on the high end ones (5") for $12,000. And I simply have to have the biometric fingerprint lock they offer. It's only $3,000 extra.


Faugh! I'm experiencing a very profound pain at this moment. I don't know if I should bawl like a little girl or scream a the top of my lungs.

$12,000? Just get a regular Home Depot fiberglass door for $250 and use the extra $14,750 to heat you house for generations to come.

What I'm taking away from this is that I should just glue an R16 sheet of polyiso to the outside of my basement door. R 19 (which is MA stretch code for a wall) instead of R 8, or whatever these stupid nuts million dollar passivehaus doors are. These things are like Italian sports cars. Very sexy, perform well, are going to get you laid and cost a veritable fortune. Then Corvette comes along and says "we can't pay an Italian artist to hang out measuring the suspension tolerances of every car the comes off the line with a vernier so we'll just add an extra computer to control the breaking and call it a day". In the end they made a Ferrari hunter. a 4' x 8' x 2" sheet of polyiso costs about $30 and gives more R than several of these doors combined!

Edit:

Just so people know to stay away:

Bella Porta
92 Front St.
Hempstead, NY 11550
(888) 366-7748
www.bellaporta.com

I used to think this was a great idea until I decided what size I wanted my future house to be and found out the true power of insulation and air sealing. I have an R8.3 (u-value 0.12) metal door with a foam core that cost me, I think $120 or so. I bought it to replace one that had glass because I wanted to have one with a peephole so if someone came to the door I could see them without them seeing me before I answered(or not) after getting enough people selling siding, windows, roofing, firewood, etc. and then once I had a no soliciting since, the religious groups of every walk of life were knocking. Even if I build super efficient, I won't mind if I have 21 square feet of R8.3. I'm always wondering if its worth it to build completely passive versus super efficient. Cellulose is cheap and if I limit north, west, and eastern windows and use at least energy star glass without going overboard on size of the windows or the house, getting to peak heat load of 5000 BTU(space heater level) isn't impossible. I've been playing with a heat load calc and even if I use .33 U-factor(~R3) energy star windows, I could have reasonable windows, a back door to a patio, a front door, and a door to the garage and enough glass to light the house and save more over many years than if I bought 'passive standard' materials.

I asked a passive house guy at the MN state fair when they were showing their passive house project what sort of supplementary heat people use if they aren't quite passive on the coldest nights. Since there is no sense in buying a furnace or heat pump to heat a passive house since even the smallest units are far too large and very expensive for sitting idle he said a small space heater or a single baseboard heater is usually all people would have. I also discussed with someone who had a passivehouse that was involved in building a passive house that didn't meet the passivhaus standard. Their ACH50 was in the .80's so they didn't get the label but they told me they have never ever 'turned on the heat' in their Duluth, MN home(almost as far north and cold as it gets in the US) since moving in so they effectively built a passive house that they can't call a 'passivhaus'. Walls were 14" thick cellulose if I remember right.

If money was the only thing that mattered, it's all a little different. If I do the math against the efficiency of my current furnace and removing 6 therms from water heating per month. I used 7.1 million BTU to heat my home November to February this year. Granted I don't need 70 degrees to stay comfortable so it was a bit cooler but If I used the same heat with electricity I would have used 2071kwh or $227 instead of about $80 of gas. If my furnace failed I could have held off on replacing it and just used 3 space heaters(15k btu) instead or ducted my electric clothes dryer to the 3rd story of my house where it would heat the 3rd and 4th floors comfortably enough for our relatively less cold winter than usual. This is with R13 fiberglass+R4 foam 2x4 wall construction. Of course comfort would be at stake and I would have replaced the furnace anyway but it gets you thinking as digging up the ground and the cost of a GSHP begins to make little sense once you get below a certain level of heat load. I started looking at smaller ducted RV heaters(I've seen them usually around 15-30k BTU) with an orifice replacement to make it suitable for natural gas if its possible or maybe just save the connection cost of natural gas and use propane, if not, a well placed single ductless mini-split and a backup space heater might do the trick for heating and cooling a well enough insulated small house. I guess it depends on whether or not someone wants a passive McMansion.

Yep.

I've been meaning to start a thread here to discuss this recent GBA blog entry:
Occupant Behavior Makes a Difference | GreenBuildingAdvisor.com

This is a comparison between the house my friend made, which I seem to talk about a lot, and a passivehaus made in the same state.

Moral of the story?

I have friends who grew up on rice farms in Japan and they didn't have heat or insulation. No insulation. NO air sealing. None. At all. They talk about feeling the wind in their bedrooms at night and waking up to the top of the fish bowl frozen. They would cook food on a kerosene lamp and opening the lid of the earthenware pot was a highlight of the day because of the warmth. They would leave it cooking all week, occasionally adding vegetables as they ran out. My grandmother told me that as a child during the depression in Buffalo NY she would wake up to find the bathroom wash cloths frozen. When you start living a healthy lifestyle in harmony with the natural motions of the Earth and the universe a decent envelope is good but the real passivehaus lives in ones attitude and lifestyle.

I just read this as it was linked somewhere from the link you just provided:
"In fact, they have a limit for the heating load that a Passive House must be below: 4,750 Btu per square foot per year. A 2000 square foot house, then, would need to have a heating load less than 9.5 million Btu per year, which could be met by a 1500 Watt blow dryer running for 77 days. By contrast, a typical furnace with an output capacity of 60,000 Btu per hour would run only 158 hours, or less than a week. Those numbers for heating include the heat that comes from the Sun (solar gain through the windows), appliances, and the people in the house."
From here: Passive House Appeals to Home Energy Raters

My furnace outputs 57,000 BTU per year and my house is over 2000 sq ft and my furnace ran 124 hours this entire winter. To be fair, I didn't keep my house at 72 degrees, or even 60 degrees and this winter was a mild winter but I figured the passive standard would require less heat than this. It's strange to think that this winters usage essentially fell into a passive amount when my house uses 5 times the energy of what I think a passive house using my own personal standards would use(not accounting for building size).