"cjra" wrote in message
oups.com...
We have an 1890s Victorian, fabulous HUGE windows, which work great for
natural cooling, but we're installing central a/c and heat. Some panes
are broken and have to be replaced anyway, but what can we replace them
with, without replacing the entire window (for $860/window!)?

snip

Thoughts?

I worked over a couple of these once. I removed the frames from the window,
scraped out al the old putty and replaced it. The old cotton sash ropes
were shot so I replaced those with some new nylon rope.

I carefully stripped all the paint off the redwood frame and installed noce
plastic weatherstrips. I even had to mill some new redwood bead strips as
th eoldones did not survive the disassembly.

The upper sash had a radius on th etop as did the glass. While I was
re-puttying the second window, I had leaned the first 2 sashes gainst the
sill. a gust of wind came up and the glass broke in the upper sash with the
radiused glass.

As the price of double strength glass was only a few bucks more than the
single strength, I opted for the double strength and what I didn't figure
was that the stuff weighs more too. I reinstalled the window and since the
upper sash weighed more than it used to and I had slicked up the frame the
uppes sash dropped. I had to take the sash weights out and added a few
large fishing sinkers to balance.

The weather stripping cut down the drafts. You might want to add thermal
drapes to cut down on heat loss also.

If anyone is interested, I will explain how I cut the radius on the glass.

--

Roger Shoaf

About the time I had mastered getting the toothpaste back in the tube, then
they come up with this striped stuff.