House & Garden

How The Quality Of Your Windows Impacts Your Electricity Bill

Some things in this world are more connected to each other than most people would think they are. Not that long ago, many doctors did not think that doing an operation with dirty hands can be the source of many diseases. Only by the turn of the 20th century, doctors started to wash hands and sterilize their equipment. The connection between unsanitized conditions and disease has had a tremendous impact on patient survival rates.

By the same analogy, many people do not think that windows are not connected to electricity bills. Proving this is much easier and as with the example of the doctors of the past, this can be proven physically. By knowing these connections, you will know what to do in order to minimize unwanted costs.

Window glazing

This term may be confusing to explain at first, but it is self-explanatory. Glazing derives from the old English word for glass and the person who installs windows is a glazier. You can have single, double, or triple glazed windows. Double and triple-glazed windows are far more superior for conserving heat, and Advanced Group Double Glazing offers a wide range of designs and styles for these installations. Of course, installing new windows is not as simple as it sounds, but most of the glazier services offer free calls to go through all the details.

How does this help reduce the costs?

At first, a fact was thrown out that double and triple-glazed windows are better at conserving heat, but how does that work? Heat is nothing else but the speed at which the molecules that compose air move around. The faster they move, the more heat you will feel. There are many physicochemical formulas and laws that explain this in detail. The relation between heat and molecules moving is what has taught us a great deal about how steam engines work.

More details

First came the steam engines, and then the scientists explained how all of this works. Molecules move around and when they collide with another molecule, they lose energy. The energy is lost as heat. Molecules that move faster produce more heat because they have more kinetic energy in them. If you have a lot of fast-moving molecules in your house that produces heat, you want them to stay there. If you have a single glazed window, the molecules will collide with them, and transfer heat to the window. 

The window is now heated, and it will transfer the heat to the outside air molecules. These molecules will travel, and new ones with less energy will be there again to absorb the heat. The equilibrium is always changing and so heat from your home will always go outside. If you have a double-glazed window, there is some space between the air from your home and the outside air. This air in between (which is not usually air but some other inert gas), serves to not let the heat travel so easily out of your home. It traps it and is in equilibrium with the heat in your home.

What does this mean?

With less heat being wasted on the outside, there will be no more need to crank the heating to the max. More energy will stay in your home, and thus there will be no more need to keep the heating always on and you can turn it off every once in a while. Your energy bills will reduce by quite a lot, especially now when energy prices are a bit on the rise. The reduced power usage is also very important when you consider the environment. Lowering your power usage also means that you will leave a smaller carbon footprint.

This also applies when it is hot outside and you are trying to cool your home. Only the roles are switched in this scenario. You are trying to prevent the heat from outside to transfer heat into the cooler air molecules in your home. You can also imagine quite easily that if you were to install a triple-glazed window that the transfer of heat would be even slower. Making that transfer slower increases the efficiency of heat conservation.

Windows do not have to be made out of glass

Another important parameter that needs to be looked at when talking about windows quality and heat conservation, is the material they are made out of. Not all materials transfer heat the same way. For example, take a look at a metal slide in the park. When it is a sunny summer day, the slide will be quite hot compared to a wooden bench. That is because it has a lower heat capacity. This means that the material needs less energy in order for it to be heated to one degree Celsius higher.

If a material has a higher heat capacity, that means that it will be a lot harder for it to transfer heat. There are many other materials that are transparent that can be used instead of glass for windows. Another important thing to take into consideration when discussing heat capacity is the state of matter. Not many people know this, but glass is actually a liquid. Glass does not have an organized crystal structure to count it as a solid. Liquids are heated far easier than solid materials, so that makes glass inefficient at storing heat, and thus making your electricity bills higher.

All of the reasons on how the quality has been addressed only at the scratch surface level of physical chemistry. You do not need to be a physical chemist to understand all of this, as it seems quite logical. It is not only logical, as this will be proven empirically once you get a lower electricity bill.

It is always important to think outside the box when thinking about everything. Not everything can seem as intuitive at a first glance. Our human brains are made to generalize things. Our human perception is still developing. That is why you should never be afraid to ask something. To try to take a look at something from a different angle. These things are not just some mind games, but something that you can apply. In knowledge, you can only find the power to change something for the better.

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