Patio doors with the lowest air infiltration

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Pointedstick
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Patio doors with the lowest air infiltration

#1 Post by Pointedstick »

Does anyone know who makes a sliding patio door with decent air infiltration numbers? Unfortunately, the most well-regarded offerings (Okna, Soft-lite, Sunrise, etc) are not available where I live so I can't consider those.

Jeld-Wen's are about 0.1. Milgard's are 0.1 - 0.2, depending on the size. Simonton's are about 0.01 - 0.15, depending on the size; very inconsistent. I can't find AI numbers for Marvin, but I assume they are every bad, just like the rest of Marvin's air infiltration numbers.

These numbers seem crazy high to me. Even 0.1 for a 42 square foot patio door equals 4.2 cubic feet of air per minute entering or leaving the house!

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Windows on Washington
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Re: Patio doors with the lowest air infiltration

#2 Post by Windows on Washington »

Patio doors will inherently have slightly higher numbers based on their designs. Even the best units are only in the mid 0.05 range most of the time.

Pointedstick
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Re: Patio doors with the lowest air infiltration

#3 Post by Pointedstick »

Windows on Washington wrote:Patio doors will inherently have slightly higher numbers based on their designs. Even the best units are only in the mid 0.05 range most of the time.
I know, and that makes sense, given that a sliding seal is inherently less airtight than a compressible gasket. That said, there's a local company that makes sliding windows with an air infiltration value of 0.03, which is pretty phenomenal. They say they specifically engineered it to be as airtight as possible with quadruple weatherstripping, because we get extremely strong winds around here. If only they made patio doors! I am strongly considering their windows though.

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Windows on Washington
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Re: Patio doors with the lowest air infiltration

#4 Post by Windows on Washington »

What window is that and where are you located?

I know of a couple of doors that are sub 0.06 air infiltration rates.

Pointedstick
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Re: Patio doors with the lowest air infiltration

#5 Post by Pointedstick »

Windows on Washington wrote:What window is that and where are you located?

I know of a couple of doors that are sub 0.06 air infiltration rates.
Albuquerque, NM, and http://www.glass-rite.com/window-replac ... l-windows/

I'd love your opinion on whether their windows look any good. I've corresponded with them a couple of times and like the responses I've gotten so far. The windows don't have foam-filled extrusions or sloped sills, but they have very good U-values, very low AI numbers, and good SHGC numbers for my purposes.

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Windows on Washington
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Re: Patio doors with the lowest air infiltration

#6 Post by Windows on Washington »

Looks decent enough.

I would love to see what the unit size on that test window was. You can askew the numbers a bit by testing a really large unit. That would be low as it pertains to slider data for certain.

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Re: Patio doors with the lowest air infiltration

#7 Post by TheWindowNerd »

You can always ask to see the actual test reports, it shows the size of the test specimum.

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