Americans are asleep, post European windows

balderdash@lemmy.zip to Lemmy Shitpost@lemmy.world – 1071 points –
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European Window frames are heavy and sturdy, many times with thick wood or metal. The window is double paned, sometimes tripple Most window frames I've seen throughout Canada, USA and Mexico, are mostly flimsy aluminium frames that can warp super easily, most of the time with a single window pane in it

I can't help but notice Phoenix in your username, you from the south? Because up north, you'd freeze with those kind of windows. Most here are wood or steel framed, and double paned.

I still get frost on the inside of my double paned windows up here in the great white north. No joke, windows are engineered to hell here

Frost on the inside indicates it's not properly sealed, as far as I seem to recall. But I'm no window expert (I use arch btw).

As someone with nearly 30 years experience in various types of construction, I can say for a fact that this is objectively incorrect. There's a trope about any kind of social media content that touches on a subject about which one has real expertise, don't remember exactly how it goes, but anyhow, let's just say that the ignorance in this thread is absolutely astonishing.

Go down to your local big box hardware store and try to find a single-pane window, for example. You can't because nobody makes them. If you want a single-pane window you have to buy a sheet of glass and know how to install and glaze it yourself.

Aluminium frames are actually the most long-lived, also, in case you didn't notice aluminium is a metal.

Cheap European windows tend to be plastic, expensive ones wood or aluminium though the latter aren't generally used in domestic settings. The plastic ones often have wood in them for structural reasons but it's so ugly noone would ever expose it.

Generally speaking the frames could hold longer if built better, but then you'd pay out of your nose for window panes that don't fail earlier those inert gases aren't easy to seal in for decades on end.