The summer of new home improvements continued today as we took on another upgrade project, this time for the basement windows. The basement only has 3 windows and they are your typical basement casement windows, and like many of the other windows in the house they are from the late 1960s. The previous owner had some curtains over them which prevented almost all natural light from entering the basement, and when we removed them we found out why they had them up to being with; the windows were terrible. In addition to the years of dust caught behind the curtains there were scores of cobwebs and legitimate spider webs. The spider webs serve to reinforce my thought that these windows leak air, as spiders generally tend to make their webs in areas that offer a food supply, and where air can enter, so can small bugs for them to eat. We are resolving and improving all of that today by having these old and very inefficient casement windows replaced with glass block windows. Two of the three windows will have vents that can be opened, as this is a requirement for fire code as it allows for ventilation in the basement should it be needed, but the third will be solid glass block. In addition to improving the look of the windows and improving the energy efficiency of them, the glass block also provide additional security that the old casement windows severely lacked! I was shocked at how quickly and easily it was for the guys from Downriver Glass Block to open and remove these windows, from the outside! I’m surprised for that reason alone the previous owner hadn’t replaced these years ago, but then again, with them covered they may not even have remembered what kind of windows they were! Once the windows were fully replaced we were immediately surprised at just how much more light the new windows let in! It’s nice to have some natural light down there. Now all of the windows in the house have been replaced, with the exception of the exterior storm doors. To replace these windows was relatively inexpensive as well, which was a nice change after the last two projects! Thankfully we are done with everything now and we can relax a bit and enjoy our new home.

It looks like this is going to be the summer of major projects for our new home. Just a few months ago we replaced all the windows and redesigned the structure of the facade by adding a bow-window, and now we find ourselves working on a major interior project. Today we are having the entire HVAC system replaced and are installing a new Trane furnace and central air conditioning unit. Unlike the windows, this is something that was nowhere on our radar and caught us completely off guard. However, this project does make sense considering we did replace the windows making the house more energy-efficient, this component seems like the logical next piece, but that is not why or how it happened. Over the winter, despite at least one window leaking pretty badly, the furnace did an excellent job at keeping the house comfortable, the same can not be said for the existing central air conditioner so far this summer!

Last month there were a couple of days we needed to run the central air (central air was one of the items on my list that a house must have, as I do not handle heat very well) and it barely made a dent in the temperature of the first floor and did absolutely nothing for the second! Understanding that we had no knowledge of the service history of the unit, that was our first step. We contacted Harriman Heating and had them come out to service and clean the unit. When the technician came out to perform this work he first performed a thorough cleaning and testing and was able to give us some additional information about the unit. As it turned out the unit was from the early 1980’s and still had every single original component, nothing had ever been replaced! This is exceedingly rare and he was a little impressed by that fact, as were we. However, he also gave us some less impressive news. As it turned out this unit was at least ½ ton undersized for the size of our house, and it is almost 2 pounds low on coolant. Now the coolant can be refilled, but because the unit is so old it also uses an older style coolant that is more expensive (almost double the cost) and without filling it he could not verify if there was a leak in the coolant system or not. Additionally, because the unit is undersized he also could not be sure it would make a large enough improvement in the units performance to justify the possibility of the coolant leaking. As such we decided to get a quote to replace the unit, which lead to a discussion about replacing the furnace to get the full benefits of the newer high-efficiency systems. Which in turn brings us to today.

It’s very hot today, and we had no central air at all for a good portion of the day because Harriman Heating was here removing the old furnace and air conditioning unit and installing a new Trane system! I have never seen this type of work performed before, having never owned a home, and I am pretty impressed with the fact that this is only a two-man job. The guys have been professional, and great to talk with. They have answered all the questions I have asked and explained things to me in a way I can understand and I greatly appreciate that because I like to learn and know what’s going on. They have gotten the entire unit installed but only the air conditioning is currently functioning, they will return tomorrow to finish the few items left on the furnace. That being said, the new air conditioner is amazing! They told us the moment it was ready to go and we closed all the windows and turned on the new unit to break it in. Within 15 minutes we could feel a drastic difference between this unit and the old one. The temperature and humidity (the new Trane thermostat shows the humidity!) dropped significantly! Watching the humidity get pulled out and seeing the water flushed to the utility sink in the basement is interesting, this unit pulls out a lot more than I ever remember the old unit doing. It’s nice to see such a quick turn around and know that we made a good decision so quickly. While it was unexpected and not in the budget, we managed to get a really good financing option that will see this being paid off in 5 years with 0% interest, so that also made the decision a little easier to make. Now to go enjoy the new cool temperatures of our house.

The past few days have been very noisy and active around the house, as we have made our first major investment / improvement to our new home; we have had all the windows replaced. In addition to replacing all of the existing windows we change the front window completely by converting it from a large flat picture window to an oak framed bow-window! This changed the front dynamics of the house completely, it lets in a ton more light, increased our external view from the living room, and most importantly, made Melissa very happy!

We knew this was going to be our first major project from the beginning, as the inspection revealed some of them were original to the house.  However, over the winter when I was working from home one day I discovered one of the windows was leaking pretty badly, so we had to bump this project up to help improve the efficiency of the house before the next winter. Over the winter we had time to think about what we wanted to do and who we wanted to do the work, and we narrowed it down to a few options, in the end we chose Hanson’s. We went with Hanson’s for a couple of reasons:

1. They took the time to really explain windows to us
2. They were providing the best warranty
3. They offered the best financing
4. They offered the best price

We had a couple of their competitors supply estimates and they were nowhere near as complete as Hanson’s was. The Hanson’s representative came to the house and actually spent almost 3 hours speaking with us and educating us on windows, including a display with a heat lamp and BTU reader and samples of the different windows to display their varying energy efficiency. He also went room to room, window to window, and took precise measurements and asked us what we wanted for each window in terms of efficiency, opening style, sash, and sill options.  Additionally, he actually listened to what we wanted and went over the options we had to get those options, and made recommendations about the possible pros and cons of each. Comparatively speaking, one of their competitors was in our house for less than 10 minutes, guessed at the window sizes, told us we didn’t need to replace the main window (the one we converted to a bow!) because it was one of theirs and only “about 6 years old,” never asked us what we wanted, gave a quote and said “call me when you’re ready,” and left!

Hanson’s provides a lifetime warranty that transfers to the next purchaser should we ever sell the house. This is a full warranty that covers everything! For instance, if a baseball gets accidentally thrown through the bow-window, they come replace it for free no questions asked. This is for every window and screen they install, well the screens we would need to bring to them for repair, but the windows they come to the house and repair. Even the caulking is covered, should we ever notice the caulking is shrinking, cracking, or separating, just call them and schedule a repair appointment! This was an important benefit for us because we have some large price windows that we are replacing (namely the bow, sliding door, and octagon window) and should anything happen to them we don’t want to have to pay these amounts out-of-pocket again.  In the end we replaced a total of 10 windows and 1 sliding door all with triple pane high-efficiency (0.23 U-value) replacement fiberglass filled vinyl windows. We need to stain or paint (we are leaning toward staining) all of the new sills and backings, but that will happen over the next few weeks.

Overall we are extremely happy with our choice and I have been highly impressed with the installation. The installation team consisted of a two-man crew, these are contractors who work exclusively on Hanson’s window installations. They did a great job with everything, and even replaced a pretty deep and long section of the base frame of the sliding door from where water had gotten in and rotted the frame. Something we didn’t know about until the old sliding door was removed! The contractor removed the rotted wood and cut new pieces to fit right on site, because they had everything they might need in their trailer. Including what was needed to re-screen our front door! Why our front door? Because they accidentally ripped the screen when bringing one of the old windows out of the house. To say we are highly satisfied is actually an understatement, we would certainly recommend them to anyone looking for new windows, and will absolutely look into their other services in the future!