My new energy efficient window

One of the unfortunate events mentioned in a previous post, TJ's series of unfortunate events, was that the window beside my front door got smashed.  It was a while before I had a chance to shop around for a new window so we spent almost the whole summer with the window boarded up.  I learned a bit about energy efficient windows in the process.

The window we had was a single pane 5 mm sheet of obscure glass that was not energy efficient.  It was replaced with a thermal unit made up of 2 panes of 4 mm glass which I had tempered.  Since it is right beside  the front door and goes almost to the ground, I wanted something strong that wouldn't break easily.  We went with obscure glass again for privacy and I wanted it to be low E. 

Low E is a film that reflects light and heat back to its source.  That means it reflects heat into the house in the winter and outside in the summer.  This is great for energy efficiency, but I found out that low E has to be applied to the inside pane and cannot be applied to obscure glass.  Since my inside pane was obscure, we had to forgo the low E.  The new window is still more energy efficient than what we had.  I like the look of the new window better than what we had before and I am happy that it is more energy efficient.

Green Highlights:

• replaced a single pane window with a thermal pane

Do you have any low E windows in your home?

-TJ