Window Labels & Home Insulation

Video Transcript

"Hi! This is Joshua Lindsey with CFM Building Science Solutions. On behalf of Expert Village, we are doing a frame walk and insulation inspection on this home. Every window that you have is going to have that label that you just saw on it that is going to talk about the U-Factor. It is going to talk about the Solar Heat Gain Coefficiency as we call it the SHGC of a window. What you are looking for is you are looking for the lowest of those that you can possibly get. The U-Factor of a window is simply an invert to R-Value. So earlier we were talking about R-Values and what your R-Values need to be in each window. So when you invert the U-Factor, you get the R-Value of the window. You are really looking to get your R-Value as high as possible so therefore at this stage, we are looking for the U-Factor and the Solar Heat Gain Coefficiency to be as low as possible. Now having said that, that is for this climate. This climate we need the low as possible. Okay if you are in a much colder climate, you are going to want to have a higher Heat Gain Coefficiency because what you are going to want to do is capture that sun outside and use the suns energy to heat your home. Here as we are in a warmer climate, we want to keep that sun out because we are attempting to cool our home most days of the year so we want to keep that sun out because we are attempting to cool our hot most days of the year, so we want to keep that sun out. Therefore, our Solar Heat Gain Coefficiency we want it to be as low as possible. Point 37 is okay, it is mediocre. We can get a lot better than that. The U-Factor of .60 is on the same basis and want to get them a lot lower than that. "