Doors are a big part of the interior of your home. Closets, rooms and exits are all around the home and are enclosed with a door. So, what can you do to make the doors an aesthetically pleasing addition to your home? My blog contains tips that can help you choose, decorate and position doors that will have a positive impact on the appearance of your home. Hopefully, you will find some ideas that will work well in your home to create something beautiful where it was once a traditional, boring door just doing the job of dividing two spaces.
When you're building a new house or renovating an existing one, you'll have to make choices related to windows. One of those choices is if you should have impact windows installed. Before you even get to that question, you need some information about this window choice. Read more of this article for things you should know about impact windows.
1. How Impact Windows are Made
Manufacturers start with heavy-duty frames typically made of vinyl, steel, wood, or heavy-duty aluminum. They then use a laminated glass that shatters like a car window does — the laminate keeps the shards in place. They can use polyvinyl butyral or ethylene-vinyl acetate sandwiched between two layers of glass and add a layer of polyethylene terephthalate for extra protection.
2. Why Impact Windows are Useful
Impact windows are especially useful in areas that experience storms with heavy winds, such as hurricanes. As their name suggests, they resist the impact of debris the wind flings against them. Because the laminates keep them intact even if the glass shatters, water and debris don't cause damage inside your house.
A bigger help comes during the air pressure change. The pressure difference between the inside of your house and the storm outside can cause doors and windows to blow out. When that happens, you're more likely to see total house destruction. Impact windows maintain the structural integrity of your house so that doesn't happen.
3. If Impact Windows are Expensive
You do have to pay a price for protection. Some estimates run about $40 to $55 a square foot of window, which might add a few thousand to the cost of building a house. You need to talk to your local windows dealer to be sure. That being said, talk to your house insurance company, too. You will likely be able to recoup some of the cost in insurance savings because they'll face less in claims.
4. If Impact Windows Can Be Energy Efficient
You have the same options for energy efficiency with impact windows as you do for standard models. For one, you can choose double panes of glass. The addition of another pane slows the transfer of heat energy into or out of your house. You can also have the space between filled with argon gas, which further slows the heat transfer.
A great option for sunny regions is the addition of low-emissivity coatings. The manufacturers apply a microscopic coating with reflective properties to the outside of the glass. The coating reflects infrared energy out so the heat has less chance to enter your house.
If you live in an area that experiences heavy storms, consider having impact windows installed.
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24 April 2020
