 | Bob Crager of Lewis Street Glass is a 26 year veteran in the glass business. Lewis Street Glass is a leading Wichita Glass company, serving the entire Wichita/Sedgwick County area since 1919. They do anything and everything having to do with glass, both residential and commercial. They also do Auto glass. They are located at 743 South Market, facing Kellogg on the South, and you can reach them by phone at (316) 263-8259. You can email Bob Crager at bcrager@lewisstreetglass.com |
Glass
2012-08-29 13:11:29
Bright Sunlight...Intolerable Heat...Help?
Q- We’re having such a drought, and coupled with “over the top” heat again this summer, what can we do to our homes and office buildings to help us cut our cooling bills, which are going up again? And we’re not looking forward to the high heating bills coming up in just a few short months. Ideas?
A- September, October…the fall months of the year in Kansas are the ideal months to recognize what you’ve just recognized, and begin to do something about it! Whether you’re talking about residential window glass, commercial window glass, or any other glass, this is a great time of the year to be able to get an estimate for work that you know you should have done now rather than later. Summer is passing, cooler weather and temperatures are approaching, and window and door replacement is a great fall project. Here’s your chance to get ahead of your neighbors…get that estimate done now! (g)
Window and door glass, commercial or residential, comes in all different sizes, shapes, tints, can have multiple panes and many other configurations, and are all important to the levels of satisfaction of the occupants of the buildings, as well as some security considerations. Reducing the energy costs associated with windows while increasing the human comforts, without excessive price increases, is a real challenge to the designers of homes, and/or new or existing office buildings. Achieving an acceptable design or design improvement depends upon many factors, all of which can contribute to the comfort levels, or lack thereof, experienced by the building’s occupants. Some of these are: • Which way the window faces relative to the prevailing dominant direction of the mid-day sun. • How much outside shading is planned or is present for the building’s windows. • How bright the exterior scene is to the eye, sometimes causing unbearable glare. • How dark the interior is (the brighter the interior surfaces, the less the window glare). • The building owner or occupant’s willingness to operate shading devices to achieve their best performance in controlling light and heat. • The building owner’s desire for impact resistance, whether from storm-blown objects or vandals. • How critical it is to maintain an unobstructed view to the outside (gorgeous vistas shouldn’t be permanently blocked by window shades or other add-ons, although temporary blocking for privacy or solar heat rejection may be desired at times) • The building owner’s desire for acoustic isolation in noisy environments. • Whether the window can meet aesthetic desires for appearance and quality.
There are some basic principles to keep in mind when selecting windows for buildings located in the Midwest areas of the country like Kansas. The winter space-heating season is from short and mild, to long, severe, cold, and brutal. The summertime cooling season can start in April, and run all the way through mid October in some years. Thus, there is a strong need to insulate a window, as well as to protect it from direct solar radiant heat gain. It is true that insulating the window with multiple panes, insulating glasses, and sometimes special coatings, can reduce the size of the air conditioner needed to meet peak loads, and that this smaller size of that high effeciency unit will reduce both heating and cooling costs as well. Reduced heating and cooling equipment size could save enough construction dollars to pay for the extra cost of the window insulation, but this should be proven through calculations before being taken as a fact. . For retrofit applications, such as replacing windows in an existing building, there is seldom the chance to save dollars on the air conditioner, unless it just happens that the building owner needs to replace the air conditioner at the same time that the windows need to be replaced. If the owner decides to install insulated windows, for whatever reasons that make sense to him or her, a few extra comfort benefits can be expected too.
For example, there will be less transfer of sound through the window, an advantage in urban settings with frequent road or aircraft noise, but a possible disadvantage for rural sites where the occupant might enjoy hearing the sound of the wind or the chirping of birds. Insulated windows have less of a tendency toward condensation, and/or the growth of mold and mildew. On the cold winter nights and excessively hot summer afternoons, an insulated window will be far and away more comfortable to sit near. In trying to prevent unwanted solar radiant heat gain during summer months in Kansas, it is best to minimize window exposures toward the east, southeast, south, southwest, and west. This can be accomplished by the design and orientation of the building, in the case of a new construction project, and by utilizing some shading techniques for the windows.
During hot summers, like we’ve been experiencing in Kansas the last couple of years, it is far better, for heat gain prevention, to block the sunlight before it reaches the windows, thereby dissipating the absorbed heat outside, where it can be carried away by the wind and air currents. This means that simple shade trees and other exterior shading methods can be very effective, both in saving air cooling energy, and in blocking the strong glare, which direct sunlight can produce if allowed inside.
In the winter time in the Midwest, most of the deciduous trees lose their leaves, allowing the sunshine and radiant heat through the trees’ bare branches, and into your windows, thus helping to actually provide extra heat to the interior of the building. If the owner of the home and/or the building designer for a commercial facility cannot avoid windows facing the wrong directions, then the use of exterior operable shading devices could be considered to protect the windows from the sun in the summer. In many cases, darkening shades can be pulled down to reduce solar radiant heat gain, along with its glare and higher energy costs. They can be opened when the sun is not shining directly on the window, or on overcast winter days, to provide both good exterior views and interior daylight illumination to the extent possible. A variety of exterior or interior shading devices are available. Proper planning can save big bucks in energy usage for just about any commercial or residential window application. Your local full service glass dealer is a great contact to get you started on the relief you’re looking for! Some information was researched on the world wide web…More Next Month…
