Video: Understanding Your Window Options

PLEASANTON — Host, Sarah Rutan: When choosing new windows for your home, it’s important to learn about the different options available. Today we’re in Pleasanton with Diamond Certified Expert Contributor Grayeagle Porter of Custom Exteriors to learn about three popular choices.

Diamond Certified Expert Contributor, Grayeagle Porter: When buying windows, sometimes it’s very difficult to discern what type of window should I have. What would work best for me? What is my criteria? Well those are all good questions since the – the industry has a lot – lot to choose from. I think to break it down into categories would work best, and just talk a little about each one of them and what criteria they serve and what would be best for you. So I’ll break it down into three different categories, vinyl, fiberglass and wood windows.

So let’s start with vinyl. Of course there’s been a lot of talk about vinyl in the past, the quality of vinyl has changed considerably in the last 20 years. The quality has gotten a lot better. So the criteria usually for vinyl is, I want something that’s affordable, I want something that’s thermal efficient, and something that I don’t want to maintain or have to worry about again, something that has a lifetime warranty. But with vinyl comes, you know, limitations of color. You can get some of them with color on the outside. You can retrofit them, which is a method of installation that’s very easy. Or new construction, which means take out the old frame and put in the new frame. So vinyl is very popular, probably – I’d say 70 percent of all windows sold are vinyl these days, and that’s because of that criteria. Quick, easy, affordable. Very limited options and so forth, and very easy to take care of.

So now let’s move in to fiberglass. Now fiberglass is the strongest material you can get for a window frame. It is eight times stronger than vinyl. It is a product that can be painted, and it’s usually a stream-lined kind of product that looks a lot like vinyl. You put them next to each other, sometimes you don’t know which is which. But fiberglass came out of the whole green movement, you know – things that are natural. I want something that’s not made from oil. I want something that’s made from sand which is, you know, very plentiful. And also I want a strong window, that I know it’s going to last, something that’s not going to scratch or gouge – that sort of thing. And of course you do pay a little bit of a premium for that. So fiberglass is an up and coming window, and I’m talking about all fiberglass, not a composition window.

Now the final category is probably something I know most about, and that is a wood window. Now if you’re looking for virtually unlimited design options and flexibility and you want to hang furniture on your walls, now you can do that with wood. There’s so many options. There’s so many exceptions. There’s so many things to think about, and of course I’m not going to go into it in this viewing, but if you want stained finishes, if you want 19 different colors on the outside, if you want to meet and exceed all of the national codes and local codes, then wood windows are for you. Again, if you’re looking for something that’s architecturally correct, that has unlimited design options, then wood is for you.

Host, Sarah Rutan: To learn more from local, top rated companies, visit our Diamond Certified Expert Reports at experts.diamondcertified.org.