Episode 005 1995 - 96 Season

| Window Factory | Vinyl Windows | Air Infiltration | Window Replacement | Cleaning Steam Iron | Sponge Painting (design) | Adjustable Rate Mortgage | |

To order a Video Tape, call 1-800-TO-BUILD and ask for Episode #005.


Aluminum Window Factory

Michael Holigan : When your windows are being manufactured for your new house, there's two important things we have to keep in mind. One, we want to build a window energy efficient and two, we don't want any moisture to ever get between the two panes of glass.

Al Carrell : Now how do we accomplish that? This is a perimeter bar that goes all the way around and causes a frame to be formed. The glass goes on either side of this bar. It's perforated along here and it's hollow in here. We're going to fill that with a desiccate which is called sodium chloride.

M.H.: And sodium chloride is actually a form of base salt and that base salt is going to extract the residual moisture that's left on the two panes after we assemble them. That way we won't have any moisture build up between the panes of glass.

A.C.: Let's go down the line and see how these are put together.

M.H.: The next item we do is we assemble all of our perimeter bars together to form a square for our window with just little plastic clips to hold them in place.

A.C.: And the next step is to put these cross pieces in here. These are called mutton bars.

M.H.: And that's going to give us our nice crisscross design that's very standard in windows everywhere. Now that our perimeter frames are assembled, we go ahead and snap our mutton bars in place and that gives you your total window. Only missing one thing, and that's the glass.

A.C.: Before the glass is actually put in we have to clean every surface there that the glass is going to touch.

M.H.: Let's go put it in. First thing we do with our glass is wash it because we definitely want it to be clean and then we run it through a heated dryer because we don't want to take any risks of any moisture being on that glass.

A.C.: Now the panes of glass that are coming through here are precut to size and then, there...you can see they're taking our frames that are already put together and putting glass on each side. This lady is dusting that with a Lucite powder so that you don't have any of the glass sticking together at the time we want to take them apart.

M.H.: Now to hold our panes of glass together on both sides of the perimeter bar, we come in with a sealant and apply it all the way around the perimeter of the window. Then we take our window and we put it in an oven and heat it up to 100 degrees. We want a constant temperature. We don't want it to be cooler in the winter time and hotter in the summer. We always want 100 degrees.

A.C.: That desiccate that we talked about will take all of the humidity that's in there out, and will never let go of it, so you should never have a problem. Well, as you can see, the panes of glass are out of the oven now and look pretty good.

M.H.: Yeah, we have an insulated pane. We put in an aluminum frame now and it'll be 50 percent more efficient than a single glazed window. Now this looks like a normal aluminum frame with our insulated glass mounted in, but there's one thing a little different - this is a thermal break frame.

A.C.: What they've done is they put polyurethane in here and this means that you don't have metal going all the way through the window. Metal is a good conductor, but that's bad for energy saving.

M.H.: Now with this, like Al says, since it can't conduct because it's actually two separate frames, an interior frame and an exterior frame.

A.C.: Here's how it looks on the edge here. You can see the cavity and the polyurethane is injected from a spout that goes in here. It fills the whole cavity. When it sets up then it goes through another process where a saw cuts the metal that's in here out and so you don't have any metal going all the way through.

M.H.: Now with a thermal break frame like this, you're twice as efficient as a single pane glazed window.

A.C.: And this window also has a thermal break on the movable sashes, so it really is a great window.

Episode 005 1995 - 96 Season

| Window Factory | Vinyl Windows | Air Infiltration | Window Replacement | Cleaning Steam Iron | Sponge Painting (design) | Adjustable Rate Mortgage | |

To order a Video Tape, call 1-800-TO-BUILD and ask for Episode #005.