Slider Window Replacement

The Default, and When It Is Right

If your house was built between the sixties and the nineties anywhere south or west of the 91, the odds are that nearly every window in it is a horizontal slider. Two sashes in a common frame, one fixed or both movable, sliding past each other on a track at the sill.

There is nothing second rate about that. A slider has no hardware to fail, nothing protrudes into the space outside, and it costs less than any other operable window of the same size because there is simply less in it. When we walk a house, plenty of openings come back on the list as sliders again, and we say so.

Where a Slider Is the Correct Answer

Anywhere the sash cannot swing. A bedroom over the side yard path, a window onto a driveway, a room whose window is a few feet from a fence or an air conditioning condenser. An open casement sash out there is at head height and in the way, and people stop opening windows that annoy them.

Also anywhere you barely open the window at all. Hall windows, bathroom windows, a bedroom on the north side that stays cool without help. Ventilation is what you pay a casement premium for, and if you are not going to use it, that is money spent on hardware that will sit still.

Wide openings favour sliders too. Past a certain width a casement sash gets heavy enough that the crank and the hinge arms are working hard every time, and two or three narrow casements ganged together starts costing real money. A slider handles the width without complaint.

Retrofit or Full Frame

Retrofit means the new window goes into the old frame, which stays in the wall. The stucco is never opened. It is faster, cheaper and far less disruptive, and it is the right method whenever the existing frame is square, dry and solidly attached. You lose an inch or so of glass area to the extra frame, which most people do not notice.

Full frame means the old window comes out to the studs, new flashing gets lapped into the building paper in the correct order, and the stucco is patched and textured back. It costs more and takes longer, and it is necessary when the sill is water damaged, when the frame has racked out of square, or when the original installation was flashed badly enough that water is still getting in. We tell you which one you need after looking, not before.

Glass, Not Just Frames

Every unit we fit carries an NFRC label with two numbers that matter. U-factor is how fast heat moves through the assembly, and SHGC is how much of the sun’s heat gets through the glass. Title 24 sets the ceiling for both in this climate zone.

The point people miss is that the same package does not suit all four sides of a house. A west wall taking full afternoon sun wants a low SHGC and a decent low-E coating, because that elevation is what makes the living room unbearable in July. A north wall does not need the same glass and there is no reason to pay for it. We spec per elevation.

What We Check Before Quoting

Whether the frames are square, using a level and a story pole rather than a glance. Whether the sill has rot or the stucco below it is stained. Whether the track drainage holes are clear, because a slider sill is a gutter and a blocked one puts water back into the wall. Whether the existing units are single glazed, which many of the older tract windows still are.

Retrofit sliders for a standard bedroom opening run roughly $550 to $900 installed. Full frame with stucco patching runs higher, and we will show you why on the wall itself rather than in an email.

Call (951) 274-2251 to have the openings measured.