WInter soltice coming - December 20th!

All my plugs are now "plugged" now....and the cold weather is now here!

The coldest month is upon us in Fort Lupton, CO and lots to be done before January (January's average night time low is 12° F) comes.

The worse heat loss area of ANY home has been and for some time into the future will be the WINDOWS of ones home. In our home we have 5 north windows, 7 south windows, one north sliding door, 4 windows to the west and only 3 windows facing east. So add all the windows and doors all up and we have a lot of glass square footage.

I am using a three-four level attack on the each window depending on its location on the house. To start with we have double pain windows with about a 1/4" air gap (the higher the better in general) which starts with about a R1.7 valve. With mini blinds on all windows I may have MAYBE an R2. Compare that to our walls with about an R25. A HUGE difference. My end goal is to have a windows with a R20 minimum and them when we replace the existing windows to have an R30 window.

Step one: Put window film on the inside glass that will retain up to 55% of the heat in the winter and keep OUT about 70% of the heat in the summer. This type of film will not go on all windows but just the west and north windows. The south windows will have no see un screens on them that block out over 80% of the sunlight which is what you want in the SUMMER but you want as much light as you can get in the winter. The only film that will go on the south side is film that will block out 99% of the harmful UV that causes fading of your furniture over time.

By putting film on the west side I keep out the afternoon sun that you do NOT want in the summer and keep as much heat in the house in the winter while letting daylight in. With film on the north windows I am retaining as much heat as I can during daylight hours and in our case when the sun gets way west when it sets in the summer it keeps the heat out. The house faces off to the west of south so in the summer months the sun actually goes through our north windows in the summer time towards the end of the day.

This may not increase the R value by much (maybe by 1) but it will reduce both the heating and cooling costs in the summer with a minimal effort. To achieve this I bought a one roll of window film named Titanium from a manufacturer called Gila Films, Inc. I tried it this weekend but I have to tell you it is a bitch to put on smoothly. I have no idea how the "professionals" do it (I would love to know or watch) but after going through a 36" x 15' role I was baffled as to how this stuff looks so good in their advertising. What bugs me is that they don't even have a video on their web site that DEMONSTRATES how to do this yourself. Yes the instructions are clear but their new product has the same instructions as the old products it seems to me. The new product has adhesive on the side that goes onto the window. I believe the old stuff does not. So this new stuff is a SOB to put on and not get bubbles or creases in it.
So if you want a really great looking job hire a professional to do it. Since we plan to replace the windows next year I won't lose any sleep over my work...the next roll hopefully will go on much better after I have a talk with the company who makes this stiff before I do this again!

I will talk about step two tomorrow.