Patio Door, Low E glass vs Clear glass

I would agree completely. One measure of a windows performance is "how comfortable" the room feels.

Heat goes to cold. Nature likes balance. The colder the windows, the more uncomfortable it is to stand (or sit) close to them because they are drawinf heat from your body in an attempt to equalize temperature between you and the window. So increasing the temperature of the glass surface really does make you feel physically more comfortable.

oberon,
great posts about the Low E coatings I learned a lot about how the different coatings are applied. Do you work in window manufacturing ? I would agree that more often then not Low E is a worth while thing to do

Lou

A second big advantage of low-e is that it stops a significant amount of UV, which helps slow down fabric fading and rotting. Most of the coatings are on a thin film of plastic suspended between the glass in the better systems...in fact, some have more than one film between the glass.

Hi Lou,

I do work in the window/glass industry primarily in the areas of quality, product development, and certification.

I don't work for any particular window company, but I have worked directly with many different window companies.

Thanks!


jadnashua,

Although there are companies that still use the system of having their LowE coating applied to a plastic film that is suspended between the lites of the IG unit, that option is somewhat uncommon when compared to "standard" IG construction (i.e. LowE on glass). I would suggest that less than 1% of IG units made today use that particular system.

Unfortunately, the LowE coated film system had several significant problems, that are still something of a headache to many of the window companies that used it, in the 1990's and many folks who had been using it dropped it at the time because of those problems.