Vinyl Windows offer the lowest cost to performance ratio of the the three major types of windows. Vinyl has a low co-efficient of thermal transmission relative to Aluminum and while they are closer, a properly designed vinyl window (with multi-chambered extrusion) will reduce the amount of cold transmitted through to the interior of the home.
Multi Chamber Profiles
Multi Chambered Vinyl Window
Multi chamber profiles create an insulation barrier of air that reduces the transmission of cold to heat. The optimal window profiles use two and preferably three chambers between interior and exterior faces. The multi-chambered profiles also increase the strength of the profile tremendously over a solid extrusion by increasing the surface of welded seam.
A typical welded profile will yield between 9 & 20 inches of welded seam. Some multi-chambered designs offer as much as 25 inches of frame and 14 inches of sash weld seam. This results in a weld that is stronger than the extrusion itself. Some manufacturers used to offer windows with mechanically fastened corners instead of welded. These would invariably separate early and begin a freeze-thaw attack or heat induced expansion that would shorten the life of the window and reduce its thermal performance. Avoid any mechanically fastened or glued corners. Always opt for a multi-chambered , welded corner window.
Colors In Vinyl Windows
Initially, vinyl windows were offered only in offered in white. This was to keep the cost down, but it was also to prevent obviating the issue of fading and color degradation. Over time, white PVC will become yellowish with age. Some extrusion manufacturers counter this by adding some blueish color to the polymers to balance this out. If you are driving around, and see some vinyl windows with a sickly looking yellow cast these were probably lower cost extrusions and you will see the result.
Additionally, the UV is the light spectrum most affecting the color degradation so the higher your altitude, the faster the process of color degradation will occur as UV at altitude is unfiltered. Some manufacturers now offer a rage of colors including darker browns. Be very wary of darker colors, especially at higher altitudes (Rocky Mountain Regions) as you will likely see a rather quick degradation of the color. There just is not a long enough history with darker colors under longer term exposure to intense UV. PVC formulations are improving, but more time is need to judge the effectiveness of the color imparting materials before taking the plunge.
That said, I have seen some beige colors under service for several years in the Colorado region that seem to be holding up quite well. One final caveat, PVC is subject to becoming brittle under long term exposure to high heat as in a desert environment. In these areas it is critical that you get a high quality, multi-chambered extrusion to counter the effects of long periods of exposure to high heat.
Maintenance of Vinyl Windows
The most attractive feature of vinyl windows is their low maintenance. Vinyl windows do not require any exterior maintenance other than washing. Do not paint them; ever, the chemicals in the paint will likely reduce their longevity…and your neighbors will want you drug-tested.
All in all, vinyl windows are a tremendous value. I have had aluminum windows, wood windows and vinyl and I preferred the vinyl windows. It is of course a matter of choice and budget.
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Designing Your Home
Before beginning the process of designing your home, you need to do some upfront visioning about the type of home you want, the budget that you are comfortable spending, and the program requirements that the home has to meet.
Program Requirements In Home Design
The program requirements that your home must meet are the functional needs that your will require. It is important to think about these in detail at the beginning of the process to help you keep focused throughout the process. The reason for doing this early on is that you will have less of a chance of being distracted into decisions that will, in the end, not meet a basic program requirement. This is especially important to do before beginning the process of drawing the Architectural plans.
Whether you buy an off-the-rack set of plans or opt to have an Architect design your home from scratch, to some degree that will involve paying someone to produce the drawings from scratch or modifying an existing plan to conform to your program requirements. Time spent in planning on the front will reduce the time to accommodate your changes/requirements in the plan and that translates to money saved.
Detailed Functions
Your program requirements begins with the number of people that will live in the home (present and future), the facilities therein that will be required to service those people and the broad outline features that you desire in your home. It is alright to load up on features, but a more useful method of doing this is to do a matrix of features with a priority assigned (1-5) you assign to that feature.
Functional Space Requirements
Include the size of the kitchen, number of full bathrooms the number of 1/2 or 3/4 baths, any powder rooms, media rooms, family rooms, number of bedrooms, number of sinks in the bathrooms, number of showers occurring at the same time, etc.
Design Features
Include items that will enhance your enjoyment of the house, the comfort and usability and the level of customization. This can extend to items such as:
- Home Theater Systems
- Home Automation Systems
- Tankless Water Heaters
- Multiple Dishwashers
- Alarm Systems
- Heat Pumps
Once you have developed both a functional requirement and a features matrix, you can start the process of thinking about the budget and budgeting for these specific features so that you can start to relate them to the overall budget.
The Value of Bubble Diagrams
Bubble diagrams are a useful tool in the beginning stages of designing your home. Before you can begin defining the spaces with walls on the floor plan,you need to understand the relationships between the spaces as you picture them in your mind.
Architects begin with a bubble diagram. The bubbles represent interior spaces and their importance and relationship to each other. You can do simple ones with your Open Office Draw tool (free download) or the Microsoft Paint program on your Windows computer. These will be easier to change and manipulate, but you can do them with plain old pencil and paper also. You can also do them by hand.
Defining Relationships Between Spaces
Larger bubbles mean larger rooms, overlapping bubbles are spaces that are accessible from another space. You can also let every bubble float free and draw connecting lines to indicate access and flow.
This exercise will save you time and money later if you are drafting your own plans or paying a designer to do them. This process is critical and precedes the others and is reiterative ( it is cheaper to make mistakes here) but it will help you clarify how you want the space to relate and flow and will be very helpful as floor plans are drawn. Go ahead, have fun and draw away.
Once you have completed these exercises, you are ready to start thinking about building plans.
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