Low-E Glass: How It Ensures Optimal Window Performance

You may have encountered the term “low-emissivity” or “low-E” when shopping for home replacement windows. This term pertains to a certain quality evident in one of the fixture’s important components—glass. This feature offers several benefits, especially with regards to your heating and cooling, entry of visible light into your home and protection from harmful rays.

Renewal by Andersen® of Rapid City, your local window contractor, sheds light on this notable window features.

The Problem with Sunlight

Sunlight, in itself, is good for you and your home. When you want to brighten up your home, you can rely on your windows to let light in to create a more spacious interior. Note, however, that sunlight is composed of many bands of solar radiation, some of which we don’t see including ultraviolet and infrared rays.

As daylight enters your home through standard window glass, expect UV and infrared rays to inflict damage. UV rays, for one, cause fabrics and furniture to fade when exposed to sunlight. Infrared rays, meanwhile, makes you feel uncomfortable during a hot sunny day.

Low-E Glass Solves This Problem

With any of these issues, you should pursue casement window replacement as soon as possible. Fortunately, we offer windows that come with low-E glass. Special coatings are applied to both the exterior and interior of the glass to filter different wavelengths from within the light spectrum.

In other words, only visible light can pass through such glass, while blocking both UV and infrared rays. This filtering ability allows your new window units to limit your use of heating and cooling while taking advantage of daylighting for your indoors. In effect, you lower your consumption of artificial light and be able to enjoy energy savings.

For your double-hung or awning windows installation project, turn to Renewal by Andersen of Rapid City. Apart from our Fibrex® framing material, our windows also come with glass packages, each providing varying levels of energy efficiency for optimal window performance based on your specific needs.

Give us a call at (605) 341-7831 to get started. You may also fill out our contact form for a free, in-home consultation. We serve residents of Spearfish, SD.