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Home & Garden Articles
How to Choose the Best Window Hardware for Your Home
Fri 10 Nov 2006 - 14:39
How to Choose the Best Window Hardware for Your Home
By Jerry Blackburn
There are many available materials for window hardware. Knowing the climate of your home, analyzing your own personal preference, and keeping the style of your home in mind will help you in choosing the hardware that's best for you.
Here's a rundown of the different Types
Wood is probably the most widely used material for ages for window hardware. This due to the fact that it's simple to work with, being easily adaptable, shaped, and painted or stained to comply with the decorations already in place in the home. Both professionals and handy homeowners use this material for all the reasons stated above, plus it's energy efficiency.
There is a downside to wood which is the maintenance needed for it's upkeep. Wood needs to be painted or re-stained often to avoid ugly peeling, however with good up-keep wooden windows will last a very long while.
Steel is also often used usually more so in older homes with basement windows. Steel is a great storm window hardware due to the fact that it's a strong sturdy material. However, the upkeep due to rusting can be a nuisance, as well as the fact that steel is not a very energy efficient hardware, being that it easily allows air to escape through gaps in the frame.
Aluminum behaves much like steal, both for durability but for low energy efficiency as well. A great benefit however is that maintenance is not as much a problem because the color in the aluminum is baked on making repainting unnecessary.
Now Vinyl is a great option for your hardware. Like steal and aluminum it's quite durable, plus it's very inexpensive. It gets even better; vinyl windows are virtually maintenance free, not needing repainted, and it doesn't rust, chip, or even scratch and peel. The variety of colors in vinyl is substantial. Vinyl all in all is a great choice, plus the energy efficiency of it, and it's strength acts as a great weather and storm proof hardware.
Fiberglass is newer on the seen for window hardware. However it is proving to be very efficient both for energy and durability. The downfall though is that it is expensive and you end up paying handsomely for all of these benefits.
Keeping the heat in during cold weather, and cold in during the warm weather is a tricky aspect and something to consider when choosing your window hardware material. Using the best material will save you much money in the long run on energy bills.
Using insulated glass along with the different types of framing hardware will help save you money on energy as well.
Though all of this is important, we also know that you want your home to look good, and the choice depends nearly as much cosmetically as efficiently which decision you'll make.
Taking everything in consideration, and planning is a wise choice and will decrease your chances of regretting a decision.
Jerry Blackburn's long articles can be discovered on many websites associated with locks and home security. You might come across his work on window hardware over at http://www.replacement-windows-tips.com and many different sources for window hardware information.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Jerry_Blackburn
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