Farley Window Quality?

Home Serve

I have had a new supplier approach me about carrying Farley windows. I've checked their web site, warranty, and have seen some samples that look well built, good weatherstrip, and solid but was looking for some feedback from the pros who may have some experiences with them. Also they offer a enhanced low e option called Sol-R Ti that does a great job of reflecting solar heat gain in summer and an increase in R-value in winter (according to the literature). R-value 3.23, U-value 0.31, Solar heat gain 0.38. Pricing is good, windows made in Canada.
Your thoughts?
Thanks,
David

Home Serve

Doesn't anyone know of Farley window? Made in Canada, think they manuf. for HD up there come on guys has nobody run into them out there?? hello??
Thanks,
Dave

dougchips

HS, there are hundreds of companies selling windows in the US. MOST of them sell garbage with a long warranty and in a few years they sell their factory and screw the homeowners. Go to the NFRC site and scroll through the list, it will boggle your mind.

Last year I heard a figure of between 400-600 different brands. I sell and install windows for a living and can only think of about 30 brands.

Run these checks on them if nobody here can help you out.

www.nfrc.org --make sure the windows are rated and you can compare the ratings.

BBB- see what they have for complaints

ask for references, find contractors that purchased their stuff 5,10,20 years ago to see what type of warranty service they get.

check them out on the consumer complaint web-sites, you should get a real feel for warranty service there.

Is their glass warranty pro-rated?

Is the vinyl virgin or is it re chipped?

What type of spacer do they use?

Do they have field service reps that will take care of warranty calls or will they pay you for warranty service?

Are they under $150?

__________________
To get the best replacement windows, or sun rooms contact the replacement windows experts at FHI Vinyl Window Company.

Home Serve

Thanks Doug, did check nfrc, virgin vinyl, transferable glass warranty is not pro-rated, "warm edge intercept" spacer bar, did search on complaints and haven't come up with any posted, they will pay me for warranty service, they start at 150 my cost for smallest single hung. I should yet talk to a contractor that has dealt with them for a number of years.
I'm frustrated with the quality of 80% of the windows I see out there.
Thanks for info.
Dave

dougchips

What state do you work in?

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Home Serve

In Central Missouri.

dougchips

http://www.alside.com/locations.aspx#Missouri

Alside has some good windows unless the market is flooded with them.

I sort of like the idea of the ones from Canada, if you can offer a product that nobody else offers.

What brands have you used?

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Home Serve

I've used Atrium, Quaker mostly. The rep tells me Canadian made windows are built to higher specs but I would not believe that till I saw it somewhere else. It does take a while to get the windows delivered here like 3 weeks, I figure that adds to the cost. I'd like to get some good quality windows closer but my experience has been that they will not sell direct to us because we do not have a retail showroom. That would be my goal to buy them that way. Might be able to convince a smaller company to sell direct to us. I figure many other window/siding companies have direct suppliers. There is one of those Window Worlds close to here ads say $189 each installed. They do a tremendous amount of advertising around here and appear to do some business also.
Dave

dougchips

Check out Thermal Industries, they have some really good ratings. The u-factor on the Farley @31 is a good rating for a double pane. Do you sell many triple panes? You can get triple panes with u's under .23, the ones I sell are U=18.

__________________
To get the best replacement windows, or sun rooms contact the replacement windows experts at FHI Vinyl Window Company.

Home Serve

I'm in a rural low income area and I don't come across many cases where triple pane really gives the customer a good value in my opinion. I'm pretty conservative when it comes to spending dollars even if they aren't my own unless I really think it will help my customer.
I'll check out that themal industries. Do you guys buy direct? You probably sell 10 times more windows than we do. I'm original from Decatur IL, I'm sure you know where that is. So you work for that Grumpy guy that I see on here?
Davd

dougchips

low income people need great windows more than rich people.

We buy direct, it saves money.

No idea where Decatur is. Grumpy lives a few states away, I work for my wife and my uncle sam.

http://www.efficientwindows.org/index.cfm

Check out this site, it has a cool chart showing projected savings using different windows types.

__________________
To get the best replacement windows, or sun rooms contact the replacement windows experts at FHI Vinyl Window Company.

Home Serve

That is a great site gonna mark and check later. Decature half way between Chicago and St louis about 50 miles east of Springf. Do you know about the improved low e? Farley named theirs Ro-R Ti made with titanium dioxide. I took a heat lamp to it compared to regular low e and it really cuts the heat. I'm gonna check into the ratings more.
Dave

dougchips

I sat through a class on the history of glass. I am not sure if they call referring to "soft coat" or something they made up.

90% of a window can be measure by the ratings. Everyone comes up with their own stuff to look/sound special but in the end the ratings rule.

The other 10% is the stuff that will fail in 5-10-20 years. Exposed weatherstripping is a good example, will the uv rays kill it?

Speaking up heat lamps, I just blew up a triple pane sample the other night during a training class. Come to find out if you leave the sample glass about a inch away from the bulb for 5 minutes you get a nice surprise!

__________________
To get the best replacement windows, or sun rooms contact the replacement windows experts at FHI Vinyl Window Company.

Home Serve

Guess that will show em how well they hold the heat hey? I bet that was a heck of a surprise.
I'm not sure the data is out on the Sol-R-Ti stuff but like I say just by feel of heat transfer its effective, adds 8-12 dollars a window.
Dave
I'm off

vinylguy

i live in pa about 2 hours from thermals factory. we used to sell thermals sunrooms and there windows. customer service sucks sorry but they just went thru a big downsizing and moving heck for awhile we thought they went out of business. now for farley sounds like they have all the bells and whistles like so many other manufacturers todays. but the problem is in our area all the lumber yards carry them. so to us that makes them just another lumber yard grade window. by that we mean that everyone in the business here sells them so their is no way to differentiate yourself from your competitors. look for a good solid company ranked in the top 50 window and door manufacturers then do back ground checks on them and make sure they are buying up other window companies and not one thats been absorbed many times over by bigger window companys. this is a problem for the lumber yard window guys cause in 2 years when thier is a service problem that crops up and you can't get parts anymore you look bad in your past customers eyes and that kind of word travels fast./

Home Serve

Thanks for your input vinylguy! I believe that Farley window has a production plant out east there. No one else can get them around here tho. Hey do you have those $189 including installation out there in your area? Not sure how they can do it. Have not seen their windows or their work however.
Dave

Oberon

"Do you know about the improved low e? Farley named theirs Ro-R Ti made with titanium dioxide. "

"I sat through a class on the history of glass. I am not sure if they call referring to "soft coat" or something they made up."

There are two primary types of window coatings available - pyrolytic or hard coat - and soft or sputter coat.

Hardcoats are primarily tin-oxide applied while the glass is still molten in the furnace.

Softcoats are multi-layered coatings consisting of several different metallic oxides with silver the primary heat-blocking ingredient. Softcoats are applied in vacuum chambers to finished glass.

"Comfort Ti-AC 40" is AFG's newest coating which uses titanium rather than silver as the primary heat-blocker. Stainless steel can also be used as well as silver and titanium, but currently I don't know of anyone who is producing "stainless steel coated" glass.

In direct comparison, titanium doesn't work quite as well as silver; but that also depends a good bit on whose glass is being compared. The Ti-AC 40 coating does have some excellent emissivity numbers - basically, how much direct short wavelength heat is blocked by the coating (heat lamp test), but the best LowE2 (with two layers of silver) coatings still have better emissivity number's than does the Ti-AC 40 coating.

As an aside, the coating used for "self-cleaning" or "easy cleaning" glass, that you see advertised, also uses titanium dioxide as the exterior coating (versus the Ti AC 40 which is a different set-up entirely). The Ti coating used on the exterior of the glass will, combined with the sun's UV rays, oxidize organic compunds on the surface of the glass and will also make the glass "hydrophillic" which means that the glass will "sheet" water preventing the build up of dirt on the window. But, this product is for helping to keep windows claen and it has no specific energy performance advantages - unlike the LowE coatings.

Okay, I suspect I have confused the issue sufficiently - but, I would be glad to clarify anything that I may have made unclear - or answer any questions that I may have awakened...

And as a final aside, there are currently over 1000 window companies in North America - the vast majority of them being very small, regional manufacturers.




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dougchips

Oberon, that was a mouthfull!

If the "sun clean" products are being applied to the exterior surface and the low e is being applied to the interior surface and coatings can fail when not applied to the "tin side", will the sun coat last?

Looking at the Farley ratings, nothing stands out as great, just average. Is their use of this new product just hype to stand out from the crowd?

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To get the best replacement windows, or sun rooms contact the replacement windows experts at FHI Vinyl Window Company.

vinylguy

yes we have those $189 jerkoffs around here most thier work is in collage apartments around here. hey but you what? we don't want the cheap b#$%^&*dn that wants those kinds of windows for a customer anyways. the guy in our area is now in trouble with the bbb and they are printing nasty things about the company on local forums here also. we want to be the best with great quality and sr=ervice not cheap with no service. can stay in business that long doing that now can ya?

Oberon

Doug,

And it only gets worse!

Pyrolytic coatings are applied to the glass while the glass is still molten in the tin bath part of the float process. Basically, the bottom side of the glass will have a coating of tin from floating in the bath (as does all float glass), but the topside will also have the layer of (primarily) tin oxide - which is the LowE coating.

So in one sense, glass with a pyrolytic coating has two "tin-sides", but one - the LowE side - of them is much thicker than the other.

Typically, the pyrolytic coating is applied to the #3 surface of the IG unit if the unit is intended for use in a heating-dominated climate - but not always since there are also solar-reflective pyrolytic LowE coatings that are applied to the #1 surface of an IG unit to reflect solar heat gain in cooling dominated climates.

Since the #1 surface is the exterior of the window, it obviously wouldn't be possible to use a "sun-clean" product in that specific application since you could not apply the "sun clean" over the LowE. However, if the coating is on surface #2 or #3, then the exterior lite is available for the "sun-clean" coating if wanted - and in that case the sun-clean coating could be applied to the tin-side (again, if desired) of the lite.

Sputter LowE coats are also applied to the air-side of the glass, but for different reasons.

Simply, sputter coats adhere better to the air-side and also it is possible for the slight metallic (tin) layer on the tin-side to affect the performance of the coating.

A sputter coat is applied in multiple layers. People really don't realize, or can appreciate, how thin a typical sputter LowE coating is.

I recently visited a sputter coating plant and had the opportunity of watching the application of the LowE coating by a sputter line that was (loading to unloading) over "three football fields" in length. This line consisted of over nine different metallic oxide application chambers (not allowed to say precisely how many), each applying a different part of the overall coating.

The TOTAL thickness of the applied coating was about 500 ATOMS in depth. Yep, they quite literally measure the thickness of each metal oxide layer, as well as the finished coating, by how many atoms thick it is. Amazing process.

Sputter coats are generally applied to surface #2 of an IG unit, although they can also be applied to surface #3. If on surface #2, then it is virtually certain that a "sun clean" coating would then be applied to the tin side of the glass since the LowE was applied to the air-side.

The AFG Ti-AC 40 coating really is a very nice product. It boasts excellent emissivity numbers (AFG claims that they are the best in the industry - I would disagree with that claim), so I would definitely not consider using this coating to be a gimmick.

And as a final, the Ti - "sun clean" - coatings can be applied to either tin or air side of the glass without problem. They are usually applied to tin-side, but that is more in consideration of the application of the LowE coating than a specific requirement for the "sun clean" coating.

Makes sense??