In this excerpt from our interview with Co-Founder Scott Dorrell, we dive into the important elements of energy efficiency when it comes to windows. Scott breaks down what really matters—from glass types to gas fills to the importance of proper installation—and offers insight into the materials and techniques that deliver the best performance, especially in a climate like Indianapolis.

Transcript:

Interviewer (Andrew Curtis)
So, Scott, let's talk about energy efficiency. Teeing it up, what can you offer in energy efficiency?

Interviewee (Scott Dorrell, Co-Founder of Modern Day Window & Door)
Well, when you're thinking about energy efficiency with a window, the biggest part of a window is glass. So well over 90% of the window is made out of the glass. So the glass is where you're going to get the most bang for your buck on energy efficiency. You have all kinds of different stuff out there. You have double pane, triple pane, laminated tempered glass. You have argon, nitrogen, xenon, Low-E—all of these different things that are going to affect the efficiency of the window.

My preference, especially in Indianapolis, is Andersen's SmartSun or SmartSun with HeatLock glass pack. It's a double-pane pack of glass and it has Low-E. Low-E stands for low emissivity coating. It's a type of tinting, but it's tinted in the ultraviolet or the infrared spectrum of light. So visibly, you don't see the tint, but it stops heat from radiating in from the sun, and it stops ultraviolet light from radiating in from the sun.

So while it's energy efficient, it's also going to maintain wood, furniture, paintings—things in your home—from fading. That film is specific to reflecting heat back at the source.

The other piece on a double-pane window is what's inside of the glass. We use a special gas mixture. It's not just argon—it's an argon and nitrogen gas mixture, which allows the gas to continually mix. You get a full fill, where if you use just a dense gas, it'll sink to the bottom.

We also fill the glass packs differently. We don't use a needle that we plug in the side to pump gas in. We actually make the windows inside of a chamber, so they're formed in an inert atmosphere. And the atmosphere is the gas fill we want in between the windows. So every window has the same fill. We're not trying to pump the gas in and cause pressure on the glass pack.

The importance of that gas is stopping conduction. So if it's hot in your home and cold outside, the heat won’t leave the house as quickly because of that gas inside.

Then you also have the frame—what the frame is made of. And really, one of the biggest factors is how it’s installed. If it’s not installed right, you can have the most efficient window in the world, but if the installation isn’t correct, you’re going to get air infiltration all around the side of the frames.

That’s why we only use certified installation teams—people who have done this for a long time—because we want it to look nice and work right when we're done with the project.