Drafty or foggy windows: what is wrong.

Wind does not break a good window

Wind does not damage glass or a sound frame. What it does is find every weak seal, every gap left from the original install, and every piece of hardware that was already marginal, and work on them for a few hundred nights a year. That is true anywhere, and it is especially true along the Wasatch benches, where downslope canyon wind off American Fork Canyon and the Point of the Mountain is a normal part of a Utah County winter.

So when a single room howls or feels drafty during a storm and the rest of the house does not, that is usually not the glass. It is the perimeter seal, the weatherstripping, or the sash. That is worth having someone look at before you assume you need a full replacement.

Three signs it actually is the window

• Fog or haze between the panes, usually on the south and west sides first. That is a failed seal on the insulated glass unit itself. It does not get better and it does not clean off, because the moisture is sealed inside the glass.
• A sliding door or window that has gone heavy, dragging or binding on the track. That is wear on the hardware and the frame, and it built up over years.
• A room that never matches the rest of the house, cold in January and hot in July no matter what the thermostat says. That is a sign the unit's insulating value is gone.

The twenty-year clock most homes are already on

A large share of homes in Highland, Alpine, Lehi, American Fork, Cedar Hills, and Pleasant Grove were fitted with builder-grade vinyl windows between the late 1990s and the mid-2000s. Insulated glass seals have a service life, and a lot of that inventory is now twenty to twenty-five years old, the range where seal failure becomes common.

Elevation adds to it. Higher, more exposed lots see harder ultraviolet exposure and wider daily temperature swings, both of which fatigue a seal faster than the same window would fatigue at valley elevation.

None of that means every drafty room needs new windows. It means fall, before the wind picks up for the season, is the right time to find out which one you have.

If it turns out you do need windows

Plan for lead time. A standard opening can move fast. Custom shapes, large fixed units, and full-frame replacements where the old frame has to come out take longer to manufacture and install, and that clock runs independent of the weather. Getting measured in the fall, before winter demand, is what actually shortens the wait.