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Q. Well, OK, it's not THAT bad, but I turn to you for home advice with the basic question: is it worth it to replace your windows? Here's the deal. We have this window in the family room that's an eyesore. Condensation in the glass, wood rot around the frame, plus it won't even lock-- a five-year-old could break into our house. So we get a little money to play with and this is number one on my priority list. The window salesman comes out, we figure out what to replace it with, we start talking about e nergy efficiency and...well, you know this slippery slope. He left with a contract for a $6,800 window replacement job for the whole damn house.
This is a Levitt Cape Cod, built in 1968 or so, with the original windows. He didn't really have to do much of a sales job on me, because I've been wanting to replace the windows for years, we just haven't had the money to do it. We do have storm windows but even in the winter you can feel little drafts. Plus electricity costs are going up. To me, this is a no-brainer.
My husband, however, is of the "it's only a Levitt house, let's not gild the lily" school of thought. When he got home and found out what I'd done, he was horrified. He looked at the figures in the brochure and said it would take us 30 years for the wind ows to pay for themselves. Something makes me think there is something wrong with his math but before this English major goes head-to-head with a real-life NASA rocket scientist, I thought I'd ask a pro. Am I proposing to spend money like a drunken sailo r here? By the way, we're talking about the standard Home Depot 6500 Series windows.
A. Tell your rocket scientist that every penny one puts into their homes is like sticking it into a piggy-bank. Sure, one could waste money. You didn't tell me you were buying a Jenn-air stove and Sub-Zero refrigerator just because you could (and with the money you have you might not get both). It's manner and degree of expenditure in light of need and appropriateness. From where I sit you aren't out of line. Replacing those windows in my book comes down to things that are on a "major maintenance cy cle" list like roofs and furnaces that do wear out. Those 1968 windows are functionally obsolete. I'm not a marriage counselor and if you knew my history you'd know why but maybe your other half feels somewhat excluded from this particular decision maki ng process.
Payback calculations are meaningless unless the formula becomes calculus and takes many factors into account to get a real feel of the dollar position. It's not just a straight line projection. You'd have to plug in the increase of power costs, figure th e current windows' heat loss and subtract the new windows' performance from that, adjust for inflation, crank in depreciation, do an estimate of what the real estate market might be when you plan to sell THEN -- again adjusting for inflation-- try to cal culate the fact that you are selling a habitable, well kept and maintained home-- and new windows do come under the heading of maintenance after a generation as noted-- as a opposed to an aged fixer-upper. That takes a skill akin to art and you'll never get a perfect answer until the day you sell. To illustrate my point, when I was young man swinging a hammer on houses around here my after work glass of beer was a quarter, a gallon of gas was $.32.9 and we priced a pretty little Cape Cod house in Annapo lis Roads at $39,990.00. Multiply all of that by 10 and welcome to 2007. If you'd have tried to tell me that back then I would have written you off as a certifiable nut-case. Appreciation, inflation and market conditions don’t affect this decision.
Install the windows and don't look back. I'll bet you'll see a difference with reduced energy use as opposed to cost-- so compare the units used from this year after new windows against last year’s old window energy usage and have your rocket scientist m ake the adjustment for variance of degree days to get an accurate comparison. All things are relative so keep that in mind. The savings will be relative. The comfort will be real.