HIGH FIVE, DOWN LOW

Five ways to take your basement from grotto to glorious 

By MATTHEW HAGUE

The Globe and Mail September 4, 2013

There’s something undeniably odious about the word basement. It unfailingly conjures up a spine-shivering image of something drafty, claustrophobic and dark. But subterranean living spaces offer an important opportunity to accommodate Canada’s shifting housing needs. They work well as in-law suites for downsizers, income rentals for empty nesters or extra sleeping quarters for families who’ve outgrown their current house but can’t afford a larger one in the country’s ever inflating real estate market. And, with the right eye for aesthetics, a basement apartment can be bright, airy and beautiful. It just takes the right lighting, wall finishes and window wells. Here, five tips from top design professionals on how to turn an underground grotto into something glorious.

Oh, wells

According to award-winning Toronto-based architect Paul Raff, the best way to create a basement that doesn’t resemble a cave, aside from ensuring the space is well insulated and therefore not dank, is to bring in adequate light and afford views of something other than a “grey and horrible, corrugated steel window well.” When building a house from the ground up (and where space allows), he tries to “manipulate” the landscape into a garden-covered embankment that peels away the earth from the foundation walls. Depending on its depth, the incline can allow for larger than average windows that look out to a beautiful bit of greenery.

In space-cramped urban lots or for renovations where regarding the grass isn’t an option, simply switching up the material of the window well can significantly improve the view. Architect Robert Kastelic, principal of the design firm AKB, suggests textured concrete, stacked stone or a sleek metal plate. In a recent project in downtown Toronto, architect Nolan Natale, principal of Natale and Scott Architects, lined the window wells with mirrors to help reflect extra light into the subterranean bedrooms.

Step class

Like window wells, stairs are an important tool for bringing light down below. When industrial and architectural designers Timothy Mitanidis and Claudia Bader, co-founders of Toronto’s Creative Union Network, were renovating their 130-year-old Victorian semi to include a basement rental unit, they eschewed the typically Dickensian exterior staircase (the type that’s about 15 centimetres wide, made of cracking concrete and featuring a rusty old handrail). Instead, they terraced a series of one to 1 1/2 metre wide stonewalls that step gracefully from the backyard to the basement’s door. The generous landscaping not only creates a mini patio for the tenants where they can sit out in the summer, but allows for a bigger entryway that’s fully glazed and floods the unit with light. “It just helps make the space more livable,” Mitanidis said.

For interior stairs, both Raff and Kastelic suggest that wider (one to 1 1/2 metres, say) is better because it creates a more welcoming feel and allows for light to spill down from the main floor, especially if there is a window or skylight nearby.

Artificial intelligence

Bjarne Pedersen, a lighting design consultant who teaches at Toronto’s Ryerson University, notes that while natural light is the best way to make a basement more comfortable, there are clever ways to use artificial luminescence to simulate sunshine. One is to rim the ceiling with recessed, LED cove lights that wash the walls in an even glow. “Well-lit walls simply make a room feel larger,” he explains, especially if the ambient illumination is used alongside thoughtfully placed spot and task lighting. For the top tier radiance, Pedersen recommends checking the Colour Rendering Index (CRI) before purchasing any fixtures. The closer the CRI is to 100, the more natural the light will appear.

For the ultimate sun simulator, though, Pedersen suggests Parans, a system where sensors are attached to the outside of a house to collect and transmit, through fibre optic cables to an indoor ceiling panel, the exact quality of daylight at any given time – be it overcast, slightly cloudy or full-on blazing.

Photo finishes

Oftentimes homeowners don’t put a lot of thought into the materials they use to finish the basement (especially, let’s face it, if the space is intended as a suite for the in-laws, a nanny or a tenant). But extra care while selecting flooring tiles, countertops or wall paints can make an underground living area feel less foreboding and more fabulous. Although Kastelic prefers a subdued palette for the majority of his above-ground projects, with basements he “often uses pops of colour to make them feel brighter.” It’s an approach that Mitanidis and Bader have also taken: The apartment under their house is predominantly white – to make the place feel larger – but has punchy hues such as a Ferrari-red kitchen and thoughtful touches, like cabinetry and millwork made from reclaimed wood that adds a sense of warmth and history.
Pedersen also suggests that picking the right finishes can help improve a lighting concept. “Some ceiling paints are 90 per cent reflective,” he points out, “so the light just bounces around and around and around the room,” which helps reinforce a sense of openness.

Ceiling the deal


Raff mentions, it was “only two or three generations ago” that many basements were not only unfinished, but had dirt floors and seven-foot ceilings – the lasting effect of which is that many people still think of what lies down below as little more than a dank crawl space. To help “change the psychology” of this, Raff suggests that in new homes, the basements should have ceilings a foot or more taller than the standard eight-foot height. That way, the basement actually has a sense of expansive luxury. “It makes an enormous difference,” notes Raff, referring to a project he recently completed where the basement guest suite feels every bit as high-end and capacious as a five-star hotel room.

PASSIVE BUILDING

The Passive House: Sealed for Freshness 
By SANDY KEENAN 
NEW YORK TIMES August 14, 2013 

SEATTLE — When you visit Sloan and Jennifer Ritchie’s new passive house in the Madison Park neighborhood here, it takes a while to notice all the things you’re not hearing.

Look out the living room windows and you can see a gardener wielding one of those ear-piercing leaf blowers in the yard, but you would never know it inside.

There is no furnace or air-conditioner clicking on or off, no whir of forced air, and yet the climate is a perfect 72 degrees, despite the chilly air outside.

Then there are the things you’re not feeling. In one of the most humid cities in the country, you aren’t sticky or irritable, and the joints that sometimes bother you are mysteriously pain-free.

The air inside the house feels so fresh, you can almost taste its sweetness.

On paper, at least, the Ritchies’ home sounds too good to be true: an environmentally responsible house without traditional heating and air-conditioning systems that will be an airy 70 to 74 degrees on the coldest day of winter and the hottest day of summer, but use only a fraction of the energy consumed by a typical house.

And yet it’s not some experiment or futuristic dream. Nearly 30,000 of these houses have already been built in Europe. In Germany, an entire neighborhood with 5,000 of these super-insulated, low-energy homes is under construction, and the City of Brussels is rewriting its building code to reflect passive standards.

But in the United States, since the first passive house went up 10 years ago, in Urbana, Ill., only about 90 have been certified. Why aren’t they catching on here?

Part of the problem is the cost. Higher fuel prices and energy taxes in Europe provide a major incentive to embrace passive standards, which are complicated and make construction more expensive. In this country, it could be a decade or more before the energy savings someone like Don Freas enjoys in his 1,150-square-foot passive house in Olympia, Wash., offsets the extra $30,000 or so it cost to build.

“But those are such non-sexy ideas,” said Mr. Freas, 61, who is a sculptor and poet. “What matters is that I have never lived in such a comfortable house.”

Proponents of passive building argue that the additional cost (which is estimated at 5 to 20 percent) will come down once construction reaches critical mass and more American manufacturers are on board. And there are a few signs that day may be coming. More than 1,000 architects, builders and consultants have received passive-house training in this country; at least 60 houses or multifamily projects are in the works; and Marvin Windows, a mainstream manufacturer based in Minnesota, recently began making windows that meet passive certification standards.

For all that, there are plenty of people who aren’t buying it — even some of those who support passive principles.

Martin Holladay, 58, a respected voice within the building industry, writes the Musings of an Energy Nerd blog for greenbuildingadvisor.com and lives off the grid in Vermont. He doesn’t believe passive houses are right for the American market.

“What I’m worried about,” he said, “is that the current halo around the passive-house standard will result in its being incorporated into the building code. That would be unfortunate because they are unnecessarily expensive houses, from $300,000 to $500,000 on average, that cost more than will ever be justified by lifetime energy savings or carbon reductions.”

Mr. Holladay favors a more flexible formula called the Pretty Good House, which promotes modest improvements in insulation coupled with renewable energy from solar panels — an approach, he said, that achieves similar energy savings without the additional expense.

BUT COST IS NOT the only hurdle. The very idea of a passive house is counterintuitive. And when just explaining what it is remains so difficult, proselytizing is that much harder.

As Mr. Freas said, “It’s like trying to describe an environment that we, as Americans, have no experience with.”

The basic idea is that these houses are so airtight that warm air won’t leak out in the winter, and cool air won’t leak out in the summer. Windows are three panes thick, and there is far more insulation than you would find in a standard American home.

Stale indoor air is exchanged for fresh outdoor air without altering the internal temperature by mechanical systems you would not find in a conventional house: things like heat-recovery ventilators, which draw the heat from outgoing air and mix it with incoming air from outside in the winter, and do the opposite in the summer. (In high-humidity climates, an energy-recovery ventilator is used instead to strip moisture from incoming air.)

Vents that look like small, round audio speakers are placed throughout the house to exchange fresh air. These devices have prevented the formation of mold, which plagued the passive-solar movement of the 1970s and 1980s.

This system is based on a complex formula devised in the early 1990s by the German physicist Wolfgang Feist, which has been used for residential and commercial projects of various sizes, including a college dormitory recently completed in Virginia.

To be certified, a project must meet three crucial benchmarks. The first is a certain level of airtightness, as determined by a “blower door test.” The other two are measures of energy use: the annual energy consumed by heating and cooling the space cannot exceed a certain amount, and neither can the energy consumed by a range of other things, like heating water and powering electronic devices. Failure to properly meet these three markers (while also paying attention to variables like climate and orientation to the sun) means a building may not achieve optimum performance. Nor will it receive approval from either of the passive certifying bodies operating in the United States, which can charge thousands of dollars in fees.

To make things more complicated, no two passive houses are likely to be built to exactly the same specifications. Thousands of variables, including the architectural design, the size of the house, how many people will live there, and longitude and latitude, are taken into consideration by the sophisticated software created by Dr. Feist and his Passivhaus Institute in Darmstadt, Germany.

The first time Mr. Freas’s design team tried the computer modeling, it took them 100 hours. Now they have it down to 6.

And that’s before the real work begins. During construction, special fog machines and infrared cameras are often brought in to detect the smallest air leaks. Special tapes, gaskets and sealants are used on the wall seams to ensure they won’t break down over time and result in drafts.

And the more extreme the weather, the more insulation is needed. In a place as cold as Minnesota, a passive home’s walls would have to be 18 inches thick, but even in the more temperate Portland, Ore., 12 to 14 inches is typical.

This kind of meticulous construction results in big energy savings, but just how much is a matter of some dispute. Passive House advocates claim their buildings require 10 to 35 percent as much energy as standard buildings, while others, like Mr. Holladay, put that at closer to 50 percent.

Either way, getting it right is tricky, which is why 32 builders, architects and consultants recently gathered for a four-day training session in Seattle run by the Passive House Institute United States, which is based in Urbana. Many had beginners’ horror stories. One representative of Habitat for Humanity in Washington State introduced himself by saying, “I’m here because the passive house we built failed, and I need to understand what went wrong so it never happens again.”

Katrin Klingenberg, 44, the German-born architect who leads the institute, has been at the forefront of the American movement. As far as she is concerned, “Washington and Oregon are a piece of cake for passive house design,” she said.

More than a third of the certified passive houses are in the Pacific Northwest, probably because the conditions are perfect, she said. “It doesn’t get too cold in the winter or too humid in the summer. It’s most similar to Europe.”

Figuring out how to make the model work in the hot, humid Southeast is a bigger challenge, something the Europeans have not had to deal with. With this in mind, Ms. Klingenberg’s organization is working to develop American standards, taking into account variations in energy use and leakage rates from one climate zone to another; they are expected to be released this fall.

As Joseph Lstiburek, an engineer with the Building Science Corporation, a research facility in Boston, put it, “there’s a really big difference between Minneapolis and Miami.” The German model doesn’t take that into account, he said. “The Germans don’t know how to do air-conditioning or humidity.”

Those differences have contributed to a two-year stalemate between the German and American passive house institutes, which have stopped collaborating on software, testing and certification. That puts designers here in an awkward position.

The Artisans Group, in Olympia, Wash., which designed and built Mr. Freas’s home, has decided to split its six new passive projects, collaborating with the Germans on some and the Americans on others, said Tessa Smith, a co-owner of the firm. “That way we will learn more,” she said.

But for those who are hoping to push the industry forward in this country, the split is disheartening, said Sam Hagerman, president of the Passive House Alliance, an association of passive house professionals, and the owner ofHammer and Hand, a construction company in Portland. Particularly, he said, when “we’re still trying to show proof of concept.”

WHILE THEIR BLACK, fiber-cement-paneled house was going up in a neighborhood of traditional million-dollar homes, the Ritchies couldn’t help noticing the openly hostile stares. Mr. Ritchie, 42, a wireless engineer turned sustainable builder and developer, speculated, “They probably wanted something Craftsman here.”

Ms. Ritchie, 39, who owns a public relations firm, said: “We could have toned it down. Our architect came up with six color schemes for the exterior.” Instead, they went with the boldest option, black.

They also put out a sign explaining in simple terms how the house is so energy-efficient that it will run on the same amount of power it takes to operate a hand-held hair dryer. After that, Mr. Ritchie said, “the negative feedback went back to almost zero.” An elderly woman gave him a big thumbs-up. Others stopped to chat.

But not everyone was won over. One man walked up to Mr. Ritchie and said, “I really don’t like what you’re doing with your house.”

Later, Mr. Ritchie realized what his comeback should have been: “And I don’t like what you’re doing with your furnace.”

Early passive houses were boxy, with few windows and even less style, but as designers have grown more comfortable with the modeling software, homes have become more elegant and inventive. In the Ritchies’ house, everything feels textured and substantial, like the metal-framed windows from Lithuania, the skylights from Poland, and the touches of spruce throughout, which came from a tree on the long, thin lot that had to come down.

Building it has been a learning experience for Mr. Ritchie, one he intends to continue, he said. But now he plans to build passive houses to sell.

“To me, the saddest thing is taking apart a building from the 1950s and realizing, ‘Is this all we’ve done in 60 years: added an inch or two of insulation?’ ” he said. “We can do better.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/15/garden/the-passive-house-sealed-for-freshness.html?pagewanted=1&ref=style

GEARING UP FOR THE COLD

10 ways to winterize your home — now
You'll get a season's worth of savings and peace of mind by taking a few steps in the fall to get your home ready for cold weather.
By Christopher Solomon 
MSN Real Estate

So you've pulled your sweaters out of mothballs and found your mittens at the bottom of the coat closet. But what about your house -- is it prepared for the cold months ahead?

You'll be a lot less comfortable in the coming months if you haven't girded Home Sweet Home for Old Man Winter.

With the help of several experts, we've boiled down your autumn to-do list to 10 easy tips:

1. Clean those gutters

Once the leaves fall, remove them and other debris from your home's gutters -- by hand, by scraper or spatula, and finally by a good hose rinse -- so that winter's rain and melting snow can drain. Clogged drains can form ice dams, in which water backs up, freezes and causes water to seep into the house, the Insurance Information Institute says.

As you're hosing out your gutters, look for leaks and misaligned pipes. Also, make sure the downspouts are carrying water away from the house's foundation, where it could cause flooding or other water damage.

"The rule of thumb is that water should be at least 10 feet away from the house," says Michael Broili, the director of the Well Home Program for the Phinney Neighborhood Association, a nationally recognized neighborhood group in Seattle.

2. Block those leaks

One of the best ways to winterize your home is to simply block obvious leaks around your house, both inside and out, experts say. The average American home has leaks that amount to a nine-square-foot hole in the wall, according to EarthWorks Group.

First, find the leaks: On a breezy day, walk around inside holding a lit incense stick to the most common drafty areas: recessed lighting, window and door frames, electrical outlets.

Then, buy door sweeps to close spaces under exterior doors, and caulk or apply tacky rope caulk to those drafty spots, says Danny Lipford, host of the nationally syndicated TV show "Today's Homeowner." Outlet gaskets can easily be installed in electrical outlets that share a home's outer walls, where cold air often enters.

Outside, seal leaks with weather-resistant caulk. For brick areas, use masonry sealer, which will better stand up to freezing and thawing. "Even if it's a small crack, it's worth sealing up," Lipford says. "It also discourages any insects from entering your home."

3. Insulate yourself

"Another thing that does cost a little money -- but boy, you do get the money back quick -- is adding insulation to the existing insulation in the attic," says Lipford. "Regardless of the climate conditions you live in, in the (U.S.) you need a minimum of 12 inches of insulation in your attic."

Don't clutter your brain with R-values or measuring tape, though. Here's Lipford's rule of thumb on whether you need to add insulation: "If you go into the attic and you can see the ceiling joists you know you don't have enough, because a ceiling joist is at most 10 or 11 inches."

A related tip: If you're layering insulation atop other insulation, don't use the kind that has "kraft face" finish (i.e., a paper backing). It acts as a vapor barrier, Lipford explains, and therefore can cause moisture problems in the insulation.

4. Check the furnace

First, turn your furnace on now, to make sure it's even working, before the coldest weather descends. A strong, odd, short-lasting smell is natural when firing up the furnace in the autumn; simply open windows to dissipate it. But if the smell lasts a long time, shut down the furnace and call a professional.

It's a good idea to have furnaces cleaned and tuned annually. Costs will often run about $100-$125. An inspector should do the following, among other things:

Throughout the winter you should change the furnace filters regularly (check them monthly). A dirty filter impedes air flow, reduces efficiency and could even cause a fire in an extreme case. Toss out the dirty fiberglass filters; reusable electrostatic or electronic filters can be washed.

5. Get your ducts in a row

According to the U.S. Department of Energy, a home with central heating can lose up to 60% of its heated air before that air reaches the vents if ductwork is not well-connected and insulated, or if it must travel through unheated spaces. That's a huge amount of wasted money, not to mention a chilly house. (Check out this audit tool for other ideas on how to save on your energy bills this winter.)

Ducts aren't always easy to see, but you can often find them exposed in the attic, the basement and crawlspaces. Repair places where pipes are pinched, which impedes flow of heated air to the house, and fix gaps with a metal-backed tape (duct tape actually doesn't stand up to the job over time).

Ducts also should be vacuumed once every few years, to clean out the abundant dust, animal hair and other gunk that can gather in them and cause respiratory problems.

6. Face your windows

Now, of course, is the time to take down the window screens and put up storm windows, which provide an extra layer of protection and warmth for the home. Storm windows are particularly helpful if you have old, single-pane glass windows. But if you don't have storm windows, and your windows are leaky or drafty, "They need to be updated to a more efficient window," says Lipford.

Of course, windows are pricey. Budget to replace them a few at a time, and in the meantime, buy a window insulator kit, Lipford and Broili recommend. Basically, the kit is plastic sheeting that's affixed to a window’s interior with double-stick tape. A hair dryer is then used to shrink-wrap the sheeting onto the window. (It can be removed in the spring.) "It's temporary and it's not pretty, but it's inexpensive (about $4 a window) and it's extremely effective," says Lipford.

7. Don't forget the chimney

Ideally, spring is the time to think about your chimney, because "chimney sweeps are going crazy right now, as you might have guessed," says Ashley Eldridge, director of education for the Chimney Safety Institute of America.

That said, don't put off your chimney needs before using your fireplace, Eldridge advises. "A common myth is that a chimney needs to be swept every year," says Eldridge. Not true. But a chimney should at least be inspected before use each year, he adds. "I've seen tennis balls and ducks in chimneys," he says.

Ask for a Level 1 inspection, in which the professional examines the readily accessible portions of the chimney, Eldridge says. "Most certified chimney sweeps include a Level 1 service with a sweep," he adds.

Woodstoves are a different beast, however, cautions Eldridge. They should be swept more than once a year. A general rule of thumb is that a cleaning should be performed for every ¼ inch of creosote, "anywhere that it's found." Why? "If it's ash, then it's primarily lye -- the same stuff that was once used to make soap, and it's very acidic." It can cause mortar and the metal damper to rot, Eldridge says.

Another tip: Buy a protective cap for your chimney, with a screen, advises Eldridge. "It's probably the single easiest protection" because it keeps out foreign objects (birds, tennis balls) as well as rain that can mix with the ash and eat away at the fireplace's walls. He advises buying based on durability, not appearance.

One other reminder: To keep out cold air, fireplace owners should keep their chimney's damper closed when the fireplace isn't in use. And for the same reason, woodstove owners should have glass doors on their stoves, and keep them closed when the stove isn't in use.

8. Reverse that fan

"Reversing your ceiling fan is a small tip that people don't often think of," says Lipford. By reversing its direction from the summer operation, the fan will push warm air downward and force it to recirculate, keeping you more comfortable. (Here's how you know the fan is ready for winter: As you look up, the blades should be turning clockwise, says Lipford.)

9. Wrap those pipes

A burst pipe caused by a winter freeze is a nightmare. Prevent it before Jack Frost sets his grip: Before freezing nights hit, make certain that the water to your hose bibs is shut off inside your house (via a turnoff valve), and that the lines are drained, says Broili. In climes such as Portland, Ore., or Seattle, where freezing nights aren't commonplace, you can install Styrofoam cups with a screw attachment to help insulate spigots, says Broili.

Next, go looking for other pipes that aren't insulated, or that pass through unheated spaces -- pipes that run through crawlspaces, basements or garages. Wrap them with pre-molded foam rubber sleeves or fiberglass insulation, available at hardware stores. If you're really worried about a pipe freezing, you can first wrap it with heating tape, which is basically an electrical cord that emits heat.

10. Finally, check those alarms

This is a great time to check the operation -- and change the batteries -- on your home's smoke detectors. Detectors should be replaced every 10 years, fire officials say. Test them -- older ones in particular -- with a small bit of actual smoke, and not just by pressing the "test" button. Check to see that your fire extinguisher is still where it should be, and still works.

Also, invest in a carbon-monoxide detector; every home should have at least one.

Photo By: ManfromSun

FRAMING YOUR VIEW

Use your window smarts

How to choose among PVC, fibreglass, wood and aluminum
By Paula McCooey, Ottawa Citizen;
Canwest News Service
February 27, 2010

Location may be real estate's best friend, but the view is the home's soulmate. Windows frame our vision of the outside world. As more people are looking for the best possible perspective, they are also hunting for smart ways to increase the value of their homes.

Windows are a good starting point.

Newer, bigger, wider, taller, more efficient windows are a hot upgrade for homeowners. Now there are more options than ever.

Architect Christopher Simmonds works on the premise that, aside from providing shelter, a house is primarily a place to experience nature from within.

"For me, windows are all important. So when we are designing a house, we are always thinking, what are the views trying to capture? Is it a tall tree? Is it a horizon? And how wide should we take the window to capture the view (but) screen out what we don't want to see, like the side of a neighbour's house or the road."

In the past, windows were the weakest link in the home, says Simmonds, who has crafted a reputation for connecting inside and outside spaces by using a lot of glass.

In the early years, when log cabins were the house of choice, people built small windows for structural reasons and because they let in the cold.

Technologies have vastly improved and many Canadians are attracted to a Mediterranean concept of living with lots of light.

"There is such a desire to open up to the outside to create this integration," says Simmonds. "Fortunately, we have the technology to go along with it."

It's common to see triple-glazed windows with low-e coatings and argon gas, says the architect. "The thermal performance of these windows is significantly better, three or four times better, than windows used to be 25 or 30 years ago."

Window company owner Bob Milne has also seen a lot of changes in the past 20 years, with owners of older homes and those building new homes looking for the best windows to stop drafts, resist mould and rot and provide added security.

Typically, they choose from four types of frames that carry their own strengths and weaknesses.

PVC windows

PVC, or polyvinyl chloride, are well suited for buyers looking for extremely low maintenance. These windows require no painting.

"You don't have to paint against weather stripping," says Milne, adding the frames come in trendy colours. "You don't have to paint against handles or cranks. You just clean your windows."

Milne notes one of the downsides to PVC is its tendency to expand. So why would you want it?

"PVC is the most economical product on the market right now," says Milne. "So say windows are $10,000 in PVC, they may be $14,000 in fibreglass."

Given PVC is extremely cost-efficient, they are the current industry standard -- which is why most companies that make the cranks and the hardware for window companies are designing them mostly for vinyl windows.

Fibreglass

Fibreglass has been around for years, but it's still a relatively small player in the world of windows. Its big advantage is that it expands very little, allowing the caulking to outlast other installations.

"Fibreglass does not expand any differently than glass," says Milne. "It's made of glass. It's glass fibres."

People concerned about having the highest energy efficiency will search out fibreglass products. But they come with a higher price tag, and there are some limitations: It's hard to get them made into circular shapes and curves.

Wood

Wood is the original window frame material, but these days it's usually used for high-end jobs and comes with regular maintenance. In areas with weather extremes, it's hard to keep paint on a wooden window. They usually have aluminum cladding outside and wood on the inside.

"Some people forget the wood and then let it go," says Milne. "Then it peels inside and it's not as good a look as the vinyl window. They are not great in this climate."

Aluminum

Aluminum has been widely used in highrises for its strength and longevity, which is of utmost importance when dealing with high winds several floors up. They are light, strong, low-maintenance and easily formed into complex shapes. However, they conduct the cold. Milne says aluminum expands, too. "It's less than vinyl, but more than wood or fibreglass."

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Value for your window dollar

Costs vary from the picture window, which is the cheapest, to a double operating casement, in which the two windows both crank out.

Most customers are looking for Energy Star products, which can range from double pane up to quadruple pane for enhanced thermal efficiency, with heat-reflective coating.

The best way to check a manufacturer's rating while shopping around is by visiting www.energystar.gov.

Windows with argon gas help insulate against sound, heat and cold. And heat-reflecting coating, or low-emissivity (low-e), is applied to the inside surface of one or more panes to prevent heat from escaping.

Some low-e versions also helps protect against ultraviolet light, which can damage furnishings.

Chris Danko, manager of a window warehouse, suggests that if a customer wants the windows installed by a reputable company, then double the price of the window and add about 15 per cent.

Danko's most popular window product is vinyl. He says a 72-by 60-inch vinyl picture window is $495 wholesale; single, side sliders are $504.75. A double operating encasement, where both windows crank outward, are $741.46 and are the most efficient.

"The casement and awning windows have a better energy rating overall in the frame," says Danko, adding that sliding versions are less structural and technically less efficient.

"You are getting better insulation in the frame, and there is less air/water filtration because they are a tighter seal with the modern versions.

"It's not like the old-fashioned ones that wouldn't shut all the way, the wood warps and the hardware is the pits. There's more to the frame."

The crank style is the most popular, however, they are also the most expensive. If people are building new and are in a budget struggle, they are usually going to try to put the casements on the front face of the house for increased resale value.