Condensation On Windows

skidmark845

I replaced a few windows in my house. Now that it is cold at night I notice condensation on the windows on the inside of the house, NONE on the outside of the windows. I am getting the condenstion on all windows old and newly installed windows. I know the windows are installed correctly as I did it myself. What could be causing the window consdensation? I didn't expect the condensation on the new windows.
Any advice would be greatly apreciated.

go dart

condensation will always collect on the coldest surface. check for
#!- windowcoverings that won't allow warmed air to circulate.
#2- humidifer set too high. there's a balance between comfort and too much moisture
#3- bath and kitchen exaust fans in use and working properly. a simple shower can leave lots of moisture

Dustball

You may possibly have a carbon monoxide leak. Get a CO detector immediately.

skidmark845

This might be a dump question, where would the carbon monoxide leak come from...??? Also do you mean one of these detectos like a smoke detector...??

Thanks,

Dustball

Here you go, read up-

http://www.extension.iastate.edu/pag...ns/CO/co1.html

skidmark845

Thanks Dustball....

Oberon

Obviously, your family's safety is paramount and the suggestions that you check to make sure that you don't have a build up of moisture in your home due a gas appliance gas-leak is a good one.

But, in the event that everything checks out okay in that department, you likely answered your own question when asking it.

The new windows have made your home tighter. By doing so you have actually "trapped" heat and moisture inside your home that would have leaked out before you replaced the windows.

The surface of the glass in the new windows and probably even more so in the older windows is cool or even cold. When it goes below the dew point temperature of the air, the air releases excess moisture - on your windows.

In order to prevent condensation on your windows you either have to warm the glass to a surface temperature above the dew point temp of the air or else you have to lower the dew point temp of the air by removing excess moisture - the moisture that used to leak out of your old windows.

In the good old days, houses were a long way from being air tight. They breathed....usually thru the windows and doors. The windows and doors were simply not very good at keeping inside and outside weather inside and outside, respectively.

Heat travels to cold. Moisture travels to dryness. Ultimately, both heat and moisture want to negotiate with cold and dry until everybody is equal. Basically, heat and cold and wet and dry want to reach equilibrium or balance with their respective opposite.

Nature does not like things that are not in balance, and so, since the air inside of a home in winter is both warmer and wetter than is the air outside of the home, nature does not like this situation and tries very hard to fix it.

In the old days this was very simple - the house wasn’t tight (especially around the windows) and all that heat and moist air simply went thru the windows and attempted to equalize the cold, dry air outside. Since this wasn’t even remotely physically possible, it became a continuous cycle…warm up the air inside the home and out it goes trying very hard to get the outside warm.

The people living in the house had other ideas about that situation, however, and they pumped prodigious amounts of heat into that house in an attempt to stay warm. This worked, within reason, but the homes were then very dry. People generally attributed this to the warm air from the furnace “drying” out the air in the house when it was actually because moisture from inside the house was migrating to outside the house along with the warm air - natures attempt to equalize the inside and outside temperatures and moisture levels as well.

As air inside warms up it does feel dryer than it did when it was cooler…the relative humidity goes down as the temperature goes up. The warmth isn’t actually drying the air, it is simply changing our perception of it.

When the air became very dry, it was not very comfortable, so people began to add moisture to their air in an attempt to raise the relative humidity to more comfortable levels. As long as the house remained relatively loose, this “new” warm and moist air migrated to the outside and was replaced inside.

But, newer houses are tighter. Newer windows are tighter. We have caused a rift between what Mother Nature intended and what we allow her to do. We are trying very hard to keep the heat inside our homes and avoiding it going outside. This has the added “benefit” of also keeping moisture inside as well….often more than we would like to keep inside.

Houses today are often too wet, rather than too dry. In the winter furnace humidifiers are often “overkill” for the requirements of today’s homes. Obviously, I would never suggest that a home will ever need additional humidification, but in today’s world it is also not correct to say that all homes will need humidification either. It is very dependent on both the construction of the home and the lifestyle of the people living in it. And obviously, there are many, many houses that are still leaking air and moisture to the outside in the winter…

ARCS

When a customer calls and complains that there is condensation on their new replacement windows the best answer is "That's Great!! You can even SEE that your new windows are doing their job and sealing tight"

skoka

What about Ice on the bottom of windows?

Is that normal aswell.. new windows less than 2 years old.

reveivl

I'm sure it's good advice to check for CO, but I don't see the connection between that and condensation on the windows, explain, please.

Informative and well said info, Oberon.

__________________
From where does knowledge come? If you need to know what is in a box, you could ask someone (not reliable), you could pray, (not useful), you can consult with the scripture (not helpful) or you could open the box (science)

Dustball

Taken from the Consumer Product Safety Commission handout-
http://www.cpsc.gov/CPSCPUB/PUBS/464.pdf

Carbon monoxide clues you can see...

• Rusting or water streaking on vent/chimney
• Loose or missing furnace panel
• Sooting
• Debris or soot falling from chimney, fireplace, or appliances
• Loose or disconnected vent/chimney, fireplace or appliance
• Loose masonry on chimney
• Moisture inside of windows

Carbon monoxide clues you cannot see...

• Internal appliance damage or malfunctioning components
• Improper burner adjustments
• Hidden blockage or damage in chimneys
• Only a trained service technician can detect hidden problems and correct these conditions!
• CO poisoning symptoms have been experienced when you are home, but they lessen or disappear when you are away from home.

reveivl

OK, so they're saying that if the flue is broken or damaged, then the exhaust gases from the combustion are going into the house and the water vapour in that exhaust is condensing on the windows. Is that it?

__________________
From where does knowledge come? If you need to know what is in a box, you could ask someone (not reliable), you could pray, (not useful), you can consult with the scripture (not helpful) or you could open the box (science)

ABLE1

I think that we need to get a chemist or a wantabe chemist here to explain this. Because at this point I don't get it???????????

__________________
ABLE1

streetracer

From the article "Fogged Up? Clearing the Air About Window Condensation":

"Burning fossil fuels creates carbon dioxide and water vapor, introducing excessive moisture into your home. It can also create dangerous carbon monoxide."

So yes, the condensation would be a symptom of a device leaking moisture and CO into the home. The moisture would not be directly caused by the CO.

adriand

Assuming you have ruled out Carbon Monoxide as the problem, turn down the humidifier on your furnace and see if it makes a difference.
Flip the switch to keep the fan running all the time in the winter. Have your furnace checked to see if it is providing good ventilation.

I have replaced windows in my own home but despite the fact they are well sealed, you need good ventilation and low relative humidity during the colder months to keep them from sweating.

The problem is many people like to keep their homes humid. Often its because keeping the home too dry causes static electricity to build up and shock you everytime you touch a door knob.

Modern windows are great at sealing drafts but with only 1/2" to 3/4" between the 2 panes of sealed glass theres bound to be cold glass on the inside on a very cold day. Even the very best argon filled units have only a relatively small insulating value despite what the salesmen claim. High humidity just makes the problem worse.

Its also more difficult if you have a large area of glass in your home, its just difficult to prevent the heat loss short of bricking the windows in.

Older windows with storms a couple of inches in front of the main windows do work better so long as they are well sealed. The inside glass just does not get as cold when the weather outside is freezing. The bigger sealed air and insulation gap between the windows helps.

Of course old windows dont always look as nice and are often hard to open and close.

Condensation is just one of the annoying drawbacks of new windows, but I'm darn sure I dont want my old windows back !

Best Regards

Oberon

adriand,

Excellent post, and mostly right on, but I do have to respectfully disagree with the following:

"Older windows with storms a couple of inches in front of the main windows do work better so long as they are well sealed. The inside glass just does not get as cold when the weather outside is freezing. The bigger sealed air and insulation gap between the windows helps."

Single pane windows with storms do not have warmer interior glass than do modern IGU's. Although there is an obvious "logic" that the wider gap should work better, in actual use that additional space between the inner and outer lite in a single pane / storm combination sets up a convection current inside the space that results in the inner lite cooling down when the cooler air washes over it because of the convection current.

The interior surface temperature of a single lite of glass, when the temperature outside is 0 degrees F and the inside air temperature is 70 degrees, will be about 16 degrees.

Add a storm window on the outside and the surface temperature of the inside lite jumps up to about 43 degrees – a huge improvement.

A clear IGU with a 1/2" airspace between the lites will have an interior temperature of - about 43 degrees - when the inside air temperature is 70 degrees and the exterior is 0.

But these are center-of-glass readings that do not take into account wind effects nor are they the temperature readings at the edge of the window where condensation usually forms. As noted, a basic clear glass dual pane window is going to have center-of-glass temperature reading pretty much the same as a single pane with a storm – something that is often claimed (correctly) by folks who advocate refurbishing windows rather than replacing, but that is also only a small part of the whole picture.

If that dual pane has a LowE coating and an argon gas infill then the center-of-glass temperature will be about 57 degrees – a 14 degree improvement over a clear glass dual pane or a single pane with storm window – but again, and more importantly, there will be a comparable edge of glass improvement as well, particularly if the IGU (Insulating Glass Unit) was manufactured using a warm edge spacer system - which is the norm on most IGU's being manufactured today. Also, the dual pane is going to have desiccant between the glass layers which absorbs moisture thus keeping the inside of the dual pane system very dry which is an insulating advantage as well.

The advantage? If it gets cold enough outside, the temperature in the airspace between the lites can get very low. By keeping that space dry, it helps to keep the dew point temperature very low as well; something not possible when using a single pane and storm window.

Although a single pane with a good and tight storm window can help the interior lite to avoid condensation (when compared with a single lite and no storm), the storm window itself will frost up when the temperature is low enough – at a temperature usually well above the temperature that will cause the dual pane to ice up. It is unavoidable given the right circumstances and it is the primary reason that storms have weep holes to allow the moist air (which has escaped from the interior of the home thru the inner window - note my previous post) out of the space.

adriand

Thanks Oberon;

Everything you say is correct and proper from a theoretical perspective and I know good sealed unit windows are tested thoroughly to back up these claims. I dont mean to show any disrespect to you.

Nor for one moment am I advocating keeping those horrible old storms and sashless "strongarm" sliders I used to have where you had to take out six heavy panels just to clean one window opening.

You made the point about the warm edge spacer and you are quite correct in pointing out that this is where the condensation is most likely to occur. The older aluminum spacers, which are still widely used today are big culprits. There are still many IG fabricating shops that are leary of early swiggle spacer failures that still stick with the aluminum spacers.

But from a practical standpoint the contractor often finds himself in situations where he's done everything according to the book and installed the very best windows available, warm edge spacers and all, only to have the customer tell him his old windows didnt have the condensation problems that his new ones do.

Its not the contractors fault, nor the window supplier. Just one of those things we have to anticipate and warn customers about beforehand.

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Screen Door Website
AAA Drafting Services

Oberon

I think that one thing people fail to realize when they get new windows put in is how much tighter their home is now. The moisture inside the home, that used to leak out, is now no longer leaking out and the humidity level in the home can be significantly higer than it was previously.

People often comment on how much more comfortable their home is after the install of new windows and that increase in humidity certainly is a big contributor to that increase in comfort.

As you also said, aluminum spacers can certainly be a problem! They can suck heat like crazy and block moisture at the edge of the window enough to have a condensation issue. There are a number of warm edge spacers on the market now (and I would hesitate to use swiggle under most any circumstance unless I lived in a very moderate climate!)

And I also agree (100%!) with your dilemma that you install great new windows and suddenly there is condensation on them where the old leaky windows didn't have any. Ultimately, the homeowners DON'T CARE about the fact that the condensation is because their home now has too much water vapor in the air. They DON'T CARE that the reason the older windows didn't have condensation is because the excess moisture simply passed by the drafty older windows - like having full time exhaust fans running. They want YOU to make the condensation STOP - because somehow it is YOUR fault that there is moisture on their windows!

And of course not all homeowners react like that...but there are some and no doubt we have met them!

Good discussion! Have a great day!

thatguy

All these points sound good , but if the condensation is freezing i would think there is a leak somewhere.Maybe the inter seals in the window are faulty.Condensation happens,but its a problem if it freezes in the house .That dont seem right to me.I would check all the seals and search for drafts.
good post and good replies guys
I learned a bit

LennyV-NHSNOLA

Are they aluminum framed windows? I was at a customers recently and they had double insulated sliders and the frames were aluminum so the aluminum frame on the inside of the house was the same temperature as outside... COLD! The humidity in the warm home was condensing on the aluminum frame and dripping everywhere.. mostly onto the sill.

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