Colorado - Accent , Champion, or Milgard

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HermanB
Posts: 1
Joined: Tue Nov 13, 2007 4:06 pm

Colorado - Accent , Champion, or Milgard

#1 Post by HermanB »

I am currently shopping for replacemen vinyl windows for my 50s era single pane metal frame windows.

I have received quotes from Accent, Champion, and a smaller company using the Milgard Style Line series.

Accent and Champion are quite close in price with the smaller company about a grand cheaper.

Anyone have insight between Accent Legacy Series, Champion, and Milgard Style Line.

Milgard Style Line is not as beefy frame wise which seems that it will match the current looks of the house better, but I am not sure as to the quaility of all three.

I know Accent and Champion are the big replacement companies around Denver. The Accent sales guy has been quite a pleasure to work with. The Champion guy was not quite as pleasant, but nothing to bad to deal with.


Any recommendations? Independent reviews would be best : )

Thanks

Patty
Posts: 25
Joined: Sat Sep 29, 2007 9:58 pm
Location: Colorado

Accent / Champion / Milgard

#2 Post by Patty »

Hello, I am in CO also, though not in Denver, and looking for replacement windows. I’m a homeowner, not a window person. My current windows are double paned but no loe and no gas filling, seals failing due to rotting wood, etc. Thus I will think “any” window will seem great to me as you probably will think in comparison to your older windows. The 3 you mention plus Enercon in Co.Springs seem to be the ones I have come across that can build the windows in our altitude. (Enercon however shows up as a company on NFRC but I can’t find their products ...) If you search this & sister boards, you will find some comments about Champion & Milgard. I did not find much about Accent here.

For double pane w/argon those 3 seem to have quite similar U-value. The Accent guy had the stats book sitting there in the show room for anyone to refer to – so they must be proud of their numbers in comparison to other manufacturers. I am not interested in their heat mirror though. It was hard for me to get to operate the Accent windows myself to see how I’d like them – the salesman wanted to do all the demonstrating. I did not like the black metal things that are attached to the Accent screen – you use them to take the screen out - how long will they last? If I recall, Accent comes standard w/full screen but I didn’t think the ½ screen was any easier to remove. I liked Champion’s ½ screen better (spring) for removal but wasn’t keen on their sales tactics. (“you’ll never see prices this low after today…”) Thus I have to think the quality of Champion windows is not too high if they have to pressure you to buy. Accent seemed big on weatherstripping & they list their air resistance numbers on their brochure, didn’t see them on the Champion brochure I received. Champion had their customer list sitting out in their room for me to copy referrals. (whether it is pre-screened w/just 100% happy customers I don’t know). Accent it was pulling teeth to get any references – the guy wanted to come to my home before he’d give me references – but meanwhile he wanted my husband present and kept asking what my husband does for a living and does he know what I am up to? (Good grief – my husband wants a window that opens and you can see through - he knows I will ask more questions than he will ever worry about – he doesn’t want to waste time w/sales pitches.) So after the Accent guy was so reluctant to give me names and so selective about looking through his forms I had to wonder “is there only a subset that are happy”?! I talked to 3 Champion customers and they love their windows, haven’t had to see how warranty works as they haven’t invoked it. One got them to make his deck he was so pleased w/windows. One had an initial leak and they fixed it promptly. I talked to 1 Accent customer and the woman said her husband was a retired AF person who did all this research to decide on Accent and they love them.

For Milgard I am not sure Tuscany is the same line you looked at. I know they told me the Tuscany does not yet carry the double horizontal slider – only the single. I haven’t thought as much about Milgard as the guy that came out told me I had to have all this stucco removed around the window and then he’d just pop in new construction windows (ie. w/nailing fin) and then my stucco guy would put new stucco all around. Costly and depressing and I worry that “new construction” windows wouldn’t be the best quality (that’s what I have!) so I haven’t thought seriously about that one.

So of those 3 I’d lean toward Accent for energy savings. Meanwhile I am also considering Schuco – more costly but they fill w/gas using a chamber and I’m told they ship it to our altitude w/o a breather tube because their seal is so good. Tricky to know if that’s just asking for a problem w/ unknown pressure on the window being up this high. But I called some of the Denver Schuco customers and they were happy and had no problems. So in other words, the 3 you mentioned would gas fill by making a hole in the top of the seal and pushing in the gas using some kind of pressure filling tube (I don’t have the technical terms straight this is just how I understand it) and thus you “don’t know” how much gas gets in between the panes, vs. how much air is left in there trapped while the pump was going. Nor do you know how long the gas remains in there because their spacers are different (not considered better) than what the Schuco windows use. (You will find comments about Schuco windows on the boards as well.) Besides the 4 window companies above that build windows at our altitude, Schuco is the only other window co. I have found that one can get gas-filled windows without having breather tubes or capillaries added.

Let me know if you figure out some interesting things about these different companies. Good luck shopping.

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