Many folks today still have very old wooden, single-pane windows in their home. These windows tend to be hard to open and hard to close for most of the year because the humidity causes the wood to swell. These same windows are often quite easy to operate in the winter months, when the swelling is gone. In the winter months we don’t want to use the window. We want the window to be airtight, but instead, these windows are drafty costing us extra for heating in the winter and cooling in the summer. Even if the window is airtight you can still feel what appears to be a draft when in fact the very cold single-pane glass cools the warm air in the house causing it to drop to the floor. When this happens, you can feel the air moving at your feet. This process goes on 24 hours a day, 7 days a week causing your heating system to work overtime to keep your house warm. Lots of people put storm windows on thinking that this will increase the R-value of the window, but storm windows only increase the R-value by about 1%. Plus, who wants to get the ladder out every spring just to clean these windows??? No one I’ve ever talked to was looking forward to this chore. Today you can replace those old wooden windows with a brand new vinyl replacement or vinyl new construction windows.