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Bob Crager
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
2011-10-25 10:59:28
My original basement windows are rustin’ down…HELP!
A: Not an uncommon problem at all…we hear this a lot, and the proper fix will depend on a close inspection of that frame situation, and whether the rust has advanced beyond any reasonable repair. Normally, if it’s to the point that it has your attention, it would be a good thing to get someone right on it and correct the problem now. This rusting frame problem just gets a lot worse if you leave it alone. Most folks haven’t seen any evidence that spray paint stops rust at all…rust rusts! In these older basement windows, there are a couple of ways they were built. In nearly all cases, the frames are either metal, which rusts or wood, which rots. In a lot of cases, the window panes themselves are in tracks, and slide sideways to open them and allow for ventilation. In some other cases, the entire window can be unhooked and tilted open for ventilation. Those usually involved glazed fixed glass panes. In the sliding panel windows, there usually are a couple of metal or plastic keepers that allow the removal of the entire window. Now that’s the window, not the frame! If that original steel frame is rusted badly, it will need to be completely removed, and a complete new window, including the frame, installed in the space. Options can include vinyl, clad, fiberglass, aluminum and other types of replacement materials. These older basement windows were built mostly to standard sized openings, but there are some “odd sized” critters that are sometimes found in some of the older houses. Seldom were any of the older basement windows anything other than a single thickness pane of glass, so therefore they weren’t energy efficient by any stretch of the imagination. New ones can be thermo panes! It was reported the first week of October that there was a lot of deep early snow covering the foothills in the Colorado Rockies. After the record breaking summer we had here in the Wichita area, there’s no telling what this up coming winter could bring. It might be a good time to seriously make an effort to “button up” that home, getting the windows up to speed, and sealing the leaks that occur as a house ages. We’ve seen some pretty wide-ranging, divergent temperatures in this area recently, and the movement of the window glazings and seals due to this temperature fluctuation can cost some serious money if not detected early, and repaired. Movement of seals and glazings bring on fogging, allowing condensation to form, which can begin the deterioration of the frames themselves. Serious stuff! Your top notch local glass dealer will be able to take a look at your basement windows as well as the rest of your windows, and pretty quickly tell you if a repair or a replacement will benefit you the most. Sometimes the repair will get you where you want to be for now, and sometimes a frame and window replacement is the better solution…it just depends upon your situation. So whether your needs are for correction of “rusty” basement windows and/or frames, or your needs are in the commercial glass or classic automotive glass arenas, your experienced local glass dealer will get you taken care of in time for a bruising winter, if that’s what Mother Nature delivers to us this year. A quick phone call can begin the process for you. The Farmers Almanac is calling for freezing temperatures by around Thanksgiving Day this year. Stay as warm as you can till then. More next month…
 
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