Using Gorilla glass for home building | Hacker News Reader

Using Gorilla glass for home building

wsj.com

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There is a company called LuxWall that is producing vacuum insulated windows that act basically like a thermos. There is a tiny space between the two panes that is pulled down to a high vacuum that results in a window that only transfers heat via radiation. Conductive and convective heat transfer are essentially eliminated. This results in a window with a R value similar to a fully insulated wall. Because the full unit is so thin, they are able to replace single pane windows in old buildings and drastically cut buildings energy consumption.

Sounds cool, but also exceedingly difficult to maintain a [near] vacuum over the ~25 year life of a window.

One bigger hit and its gone and you will not even know it till it fogs. Even argon glass of same pressure as air can eventually leak out and be replaced by air, reducing its efficiency significantly.

Are these big national-brand window companies that provide "lifetime warranty" just cashing in today and hoping for the best (bankruptcy) exit strategy later when all their installs from this generation fail in a couple decades?

Not installers, but companies like Pella, Window World, et al.

They may define "lifetime" as "25 years" or limit the warranty to the original purchaser, knowing that most people don't live in one house that long, or count on the later owners not realizing that there is a warranty, or knowing when or from whom the windows were purchased.

Yeah, there's a disturbing trend of products advertising a "lifetime warranty", only the fine print says that the "lifetime" in question is the "lifetime of the product", which is whatever the manufacturer says it is (usually no better than the competition).

These warranties typically only cover issues due to manufacturing. If your window fails decades later they'll just say it wasn't due for manufacturing.

Happened to my parents. Installer went under because the windows weren't as reliable as they expected.

One time had a big pane hit by a golf ball. Just had the outer pane replaced at 10x cheaper.

They typically use a getter to maintain the vacuum over the lifetime of the window, similar to other sealed vacuum systems like CRT's or vacuum tubes.

For those unfamiliar with getters:

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Getter>

That’s neat but very difficult to maintain, let alone transport. Large panes will also bow under that kind of pressure.

> Large panes will also bow under that kind of pressure.

They typically have support pillars arrayed throughout the panel to prevent any bowing or flexing.

That sounds like double/triple glazing which is has been around for years in Europe. The most common type uses Argon as an insulator, but there are also vacuum versions.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insulated_glazing

Huh, I thought that's a common thing, in Germany almost everyone has these windows.

It says “only 20% more than energy efficient windows” but those “energy efficient windows” are usually 50% more than the average quality window. Higher quality triple pane windows exist, and they are a luxury for most homeowners. It’s great technology, but relatively few people build or upgrade their house with the long term consequences in mind for these things. There’s a reason you get a positive ROI when you fix up a kitchen or bathroom versus replacing windows which is typically viewed as maintenance. There needs to be incentives for these upgrades to be adopted by home builders.

Many Australian jurisdictions require the energy efficiency rating to be included with the listing, which factors in things like double glazing.

Their value is absolutely recognised as something greater than maintenance in this market.

Buyers absolutely care about energy efficiency and insulation from noise, and neither can be addressed fully without upgraded windows. It's one of the first things experienced homebuyers should look at -- if the windows are 1980's single pane, I'd expect to spend least $20k in window replacement parts + labor for a large house on top of the house price.

It's one of the first things buyers should look at. But they don't. They check out the kitchen cabinets, bathroom fixtures, and lovely floors and wall finishing.

School district.

How to ruin a real estate agent's day: arrive at your showing appointment wearing a tyvek bunny suit and headlamp and immediately demand access to the crawlspace.

The thing is, is 20k really that significant when compared to the price of a large house?

For many people yes, because that 20k isn't being added to the mortgage, so it isn't easily financed over a long period of time with low interest. These days, many people are stretched to meet the minimum down payment and won't have 20k extra to throw at a problem like this.

Redraw facilities are available in most countries? Refinancing etc? Genuinely curious.

For example (in Australia), my mate recently spent $40k, drawn out of his mortgage on solar panels, battery, double glaze windows, heat pump heating and cooling, gas stove to induction, gas hot water to heat pump and is currently investigating drawing more to upgrade roof insulation.

How can you refinance when you just bought the house? There is no equity for you to tap into, and if there was, you now even have a highly monthly payment.

Housing prices have to decrease first if you want people to be able make these decisions. That means we need a deflationary economy through increased production, so more people can be able to afford the enhanced productivity.

It is once you've maxed out what you can borrow and are now barely able to pay the mortgage and food.

20k here, 20k there, and pretty soon you’re talking about real money. You don’t save much money building a house by cheaping out on any one thing, but it adds up pretty fast.

That said, we have very nice triple-pane German windows in the house we’re currently building, and both the thermal performance and the finish quality are _wildly_ better than American window products. It’s just a whole different category of thing.

My brother bought a house that has triple pane windows and they are really nice. They block almost all sound and feel noticeably less cold in winter.

Triple pane windows are not that kind of luxury.

I live in a poor Eastern European country and this is the standard for new buildings.

Ah, but in North America, only double-pane windows are required. Triple-pane windows are considered necessary for noise abatement but are prohibitively expensive. There are government rebates for upgrading older homes from single to double-pane windows, but no third-pane increase in the rebate.

Yes, and to give an idea I replaced some windows in my house a couple years back. The double pane windows on the north side were about $100 to $150 per, while the triple pane windows on the south side were $900. The triple pane also had higher installation labor costs. It seemed ludicrous to me that it would be so much more expensive, but after calling around, that was very typical.

Why was labor more expensive?

Only thing I could imagine was extra hands to deal with the weight.

Don't they use machinery to carry the windows? Even double pane gets heavy. The windows of the sliding doors I've recently got replaced were like 200kg each.

It is exceptionally rare for a contractor to have equipment to move literally anything that takes less than four laborers to move by hand.

Not here in the Netherlands. By law anything heavier than 23kg should be carried by a machine. In principle one can carry something heavier, but then there needs to be a written plan etc.

It's very common to carry stuff with a small crane. If it needs to be carried to thd back of the house which is not accessible, they set up a bigger crane.

I bet y'all have comprehensive workers compensation coverage and good healthcare too. Half the contractors around here lie about carrying a personal injury policy and several I've worked for had a standing policy where if you fell off a roof, scaffold, or ladder it was understood that you were fired before you hit the ground.

Where I am, in British Columbia, the solution formoving even the biggest windows in single family homes is to use ten men and a boy.

I got extra thick glasses (12mm thick each instead of 6mm standard) for my argon filled double pane windows in the bedroom. The noise isolation is incredbly improved. It did cost only 15% more. This is Europe again.

Do you mean the spacing between the two panes of glass?

No no, the thickness of the glass panes.

12mm thick glass is pretty damn thick and is normally used for for table tops, glass walls and partitions, hearths, frameless balustrades at ground level, and kitchen worktops.

Here in Germany triple pane windows are very much a luxury.

Nonsense, they're pretty much standard for new buildings, too.

It's more expensive to replace old windows with triple-pane as most window frames aren't thick enough. But it's definitely not a luxury.

They are the standard, because historically Eastern European winters are several times harsher than anything in USA, with the exception of a few states bordering Canada.

So the ROI is way higher.

They're standard because energy is more expensive in Europe than in the US.

Properly priced externalities strike again?

Sure, if it helps you sleep. There is a good reason for you to consume less

Better isolation?

More like the lack of natural fuel that Europe is willing or able to use for itself.

Noticeable exception includes Norway with their gas fields, but it's not like Germany has huge swaths of oil ready to be used. Germany does have substantial coal, but it's been decreasing its use of it in exchange for alternatives it doesn't own the fuel for.

In other words, Europe pays more for energy because they have to import it. Importing it isn't factoring "externalities", as the extra money isn't going to anything except Russia or OPEC.

About half of the buildings in Australia still use single-pane windows.

After over a decade in my home in a sunny area, I wish I would have replaced the windows with energy efficient ones when I first moved in. Just the savings on power over the past 10 years would have made them worth it. I'm pretty sure I'd have at least broken even by now.

All this to say, if I were building a new home, I would make it as energy efficient as possible as soon as possible. In my mind, it would be an investment, not maintenance.

> when I first moved in

I think many people fall into this trap.

When you first move in, there is always too much going on. Buying/Selling, moving, getting accustomed to the house, area, etc.

But it is the perfect time to redo things in the empty, unused house.

Put in a new electric panel. Add ethernet, or outlets, or rewire all the rooms. redo the shower, kitchen, laundry, etc insulate the attic. Change out the garage door opener.

or redo the windows.

The minute you move in all of this becomes measurably harder.

I've met plenty of wealthy people that have the mindset "luxury = frivolous" -- while that may be true to some extent, for i.e. a brand name T-shirt very few people I meet regardless of income bracket understand much of anything about the built/manufactured world.

In most realms, thoughtfully paying more for something yields an economic win over the lifetime (i.e. in this case energy efficiency).

Also somewhat ironically most people (even frugal) have some intuitive appreciation of quality -- if you place fitting architectural windows and doors on a structure your guests will appreciate it at some level, even if they don't understand why -- but expending the mental effort to design in such things is beyond most people for whatever reason even if they can afford it.

Whether it translates into value capture depends on the demographic of buyer, there is a large uncanny valley of builders that will do the lipstick-on-a-pig thing for a flip or even highly priced spec homes but at some point architects prevail and the structure is well designed at the price point.

Unfortunately, right now the market is so tight you could put slop out and it would sell like hotcakes.

This is a strange article. It portrays triple and quadruple pane windows as a new development, but they've been around for years.

As far as I can tell, the only development here is the use of ultra-thin glass in the interior layers. This reduces cost, size, and weight relative to normal triple/quadruple-glazed windows.

My dad built a house in the late 80s with all triple-paned glass...although there were essentially three separate windows, packaged as one.

Except that a cascade of windows is not what is typically referred to as triple-pane. If multiple windows were to count here, then "double-paned windows" have been around for centuries.

Looks like actual double paned windows have been around since the 1870s, so centuries is correct.

I feel like they're around for decades? Gorilla glass is absolutely no necessity to enable 3 or 4 panes. ChatGPT (sry, I'm becoming lazy) agrees that they're available since the 1980s. In the US adoption became more widespread in the 2000s. Here in Europe/Germany they became more popular in the 1990s already. This matches how I remember it.

When we replaced our 1980s double glazed windows with triple glazed a few years ago, I could have easily gotten four-pane insulated windows as well, except for the roof-installed windows. Drawbacks of multi-pane are the increased weight and them being more opaque.

(Yes, we also insulated the walls and can control humidity - just in case someone wants to point out that the window replacement alone can cause moisture/mold damage to our house :))

Just to clarify: The above text is manually written, I just used the mentioned tool to pull the numbers.

These match what I remember, so please correct me/the numbers instead of simply down voting because I mention the source ;-)

The building I work in has "ballistic" glass in one area that is 6 inches thick (split into three 2" sections internally) and it is soooo quiet. I wish I could get those on my house for noise abatement.

> I wish I could get those on my house for noise abatement.

You can but your wall may not be thick enough.

FWIW, you can get insulated glass where the different panes are different dimensions, which alone drops noise transmission a few dB (per literature). And using thicker (but not so thick as 6 inches!) creates a lot of reduction.

I replaced the windows in my home office a few years ago and speced the outer as a laminate bandwidth with all three pieces different thicknesses (and not multiples of each other). It provided a considerable noise reduction though I can't attribute the amounts to the different composition vs thickness.

Finding a glass company that was willing to completely replace the frames vs wanting to just take the glass out and put a 'frame in a frame'-- bad for appearance, thermals, and acoustics-- was harder than getting the unusual setup. I totally failed to find anyone willing to backfill with SF6+Ar. :P

One of the biggest expenses I had for my previous home was replacing all the windows. It helped a lot, but unfortunately was $26k to have done properly (could have been done cheaper, but I went for the good stuff) and the net result was a $0 increase in potential sale price. When I sold the house, I only made money on the deal because of the market doubling in the time span I owned the property.

Now I'm looking to buy/build again, and I will still invest in good windows because it makes such a difference on a summer day and with noise, that quality of life difference matters to me, but it seems it doesn't matter to anyone else because it's not priced in and builders don't care. Even if I buy a brand new "energy efficient" track house, it'll have shit windows. Only by building a custom house and mandating these things can I have any hope of getting it if I don't want to dump another $20k-$30k into a house after I buy it.

Interesting, when I lived in Europe, I observed that it was the other way around there: if your house only has double-pane windows from the 80s, that will definitely reduce your sales price quite a bit.

Steve Jobs with a windows update? Very confusing

It stole all his ideas . . .

As a home owner - updating / improving my windows is a luxury I very much wish I could afford. It’s hard to imagine being able to mess with the windows unless it’s with a newly purchased empty property.

Judging by home owners around me it looks to be quite a popular change. As far as I can tell they're pretty much changing like for like (upvc with double glazing) without the energy efficiency upgrade. Changing from white to black frames seems to be the driving factor.

Living in a suburb built in the 60s and 70s the two things I see after every sale is new windows and doors, and digging up and replacing the French drain.

Depending on your heating and cooling bill it could be cost-effective. The new windows are so much more energy efficient that you start to payback the insulation costs pretty quick.

Mine are due to be replaced, and I’ll definitely keep my eye on this. But, if that wasn’t the case, I wouldn’t be running to replace windows before end of life.

Replacing windows is actually one of the easier DIY home jobs you can do. Hell of a lot easier than building a deck that a lot of people do. They are installed after framing and meant to be removed if they break. Removing the trim inside and outside will give you access to the fasteners holding the frame in.

Usually, the hardest part is finding windows that fit and match your taste.

That's true for relatively new construction, but for instance, I have a 100 year old house with stucco. Replacing my windows is a nightmare job. Whereas my back deck was a far simpler project

Same here. We removed trim inside the house and it wasnt that bad, but I was just replacing the trim— not the windows. I could see that removing the windows would be a pain the ass very quickly. And it has already been done once.

Yeah, for me my windows weren't standard sizes so had to be custom built, anyhow. At that point, you might as well get installation as well. Some stucco had to be chipped back to insert the new window but it's covered by the vinyl frame. Low-e windows are amazing though.

I have a stucco home, I've been doing replacement windows (I like milgard) and my stucco hasn't been touched. I have other people install them though.

100 year old windows were designed for easy maintenance and repair. Are the double hung windows? If they are, you can make sure to have storm windows on which effectively work as a double pane window. If this new glass were available, you could replace every pane in your window without removing a nail.

I seriously doubt they would provide the glass without frames, which requires removing the moulding around the existing window.

Selling panes of window glass that you then frame in is a common method for larger windows or odd shapes.

Here is a random product on Amazon, custom cut Low E insulated window panes: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DHD4F3HY

I see no reason why the company in this post wouldnt.

> window without removing a nail

There'd be brads to pull at least part-way out to release sashes, though. And the damned cords and all that.

Much easier to re-glaze a removed sash!

My home is 58 years old. last summer I had the original aluminum single-pane windows replaced with vinyl double-pane ones. I 'assisted' the installer and knew he would prob run into some settling of the window opening. I was right, there's no way I could done the replacements on my own, owing to proper tools alone.

My power company sent me an email the following December telling me my energy savings from the previous October, 2023 (that month only), for the same month in 2024, was 31%! When I called the installer and told him, he said a large part of that was prob from leakage around the old windows and the now double panes.

Where did you purchase your replacement windows from? Custom size? May I ask how much you paid for them?

The windows brand is "Ply Gem Windows". They were ordered from a local lumber yard, not a national chain like Lowe's. (Prices can vary wildly depending where you live. When the same installer put in my new patio door, he steered me to Lowe's as the best price, I went in and ordered that myself.) Since my house was built in 1967, they were for that era a standard size. The installer measured all 17 windows for Ply Gem to go by. For the windows and installation, not to mention my assistance (I mostly picked up trash!) the total cost was just under $8K.

Finding the right size windows without having to go custom has proven to be nearly impossible. It's not a hard project but unless you are fortunate with window dimensions it is far more expensive than building a deck.

naive question- couldn't you resize the hole in the wall to use a larger window pane?

It depends on how the home was constructed. With stick frames the window frame is built to take the load from the studs above it and direct it around the window and to the studs below. It can be done but it is not an easy job. Going smaller is easy though. Just build a smaller frame inside the existing one.

Generally, if you don't want to pull a permit, you can change a windows height but not its width

This is because of how the wood around it is framed to provide support to the wall above

You can, but you’d need to remove the siding and drywall and reframe the window opening, see a window framing diagram here, can’t cut the king studs or you lose structural integrity: https://www.do-it-yourself-help.com/how-to-frame-a-new-windo...

What's wrong with a custom size? I replaced two small windows with triple glass ones, and just ordered the right size online. I don't think it's even possible to buy windows in a standard size (whichever that may be) here in the Netherlands. A professional glazier would order the windows from the factory just as the shop with a fancy website with a configurator did for my order.

> Replacing windows is actually one of the easier DIY home jobs you can do

I think you're assuming a baseline level of competence that many don't have. I'm comfortable with electrical work and some plumbing but I wouldn't do my own window installation.

I've replaced windows before, and I'm handy but not a professional.

Depending on the construction it's not super hard to pull them out and put new ones in, it takes about 20-30 min per window.

> As a home owner - updating / improving my windows is a luxury I very much wish I could afford.

What has gone wrong in super capitalistic America that much poorer Romanians, for example, can afford average quality double glazed and triple glazed windows and Americans can't?

Labor costs. Work in the trades can pay VERY well in the wealthier parts of the US. Plumbing, electrical, carpentry, tile journeyman can all make over six figures in the major metro areas.

That looks a lot like several inefficiencies:

1. Why aren't more people trying to get those jobs?

2. Why aren't locals trying to bring workers from low cost of labor areas?

Would encourage anybody who has a historic home pre-1940s to keep their original windows and just restore them. Unless you get 4 and 6 pane windows, the energy savings are minimal.

Brent Hull is a good resource on historic windows and outlines the reasons to keep them. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6mAmIrN5qY

Plus, the original windows look significantly better and will last longer.

Pre 1940 homes were meant to breath. If they don't, they mold and rot

"[triple pane] windows saved an average of 12% on heating and 28% on cooling"[1]

That said, if you haven't insulated the walls and attic, windows alone won't do much.

1: https://www.pnnl.gov/news-media/how-triple-pane-windows-stop...

Please take Brent Hull with a grain o' salt if you own an old home. Anything pre-catalog is different and does not really fit a recipe. Brent is opinionated but doesn't often broadcast that he's expressing opinion instead of fact.

Love Brent, though! He has a vision of old houses and pushes it.

> this glass is so well insulated, it actually creates warmth in his living room: It admits the radiant heat of the low winter sun but prevents conductive heat loss through the window

You mean, like a greenhouse?

We have an older mobile home on a rural lot in the middle of nowhere, and by far one of the best quality of life improvements we’ve made to it is awnings that were designed to let the sun in during the winter but not in the summer. In the winter we keep the furnace set at about 68F there during the day (65F at night) and on good sunny days it can be -20F outside and up to 73F or 74F in the living room!

In the summer without running the AC it would get up to 85-90F in there while only 70F outside… with the awnings we barely need the air conditioner most of the time. Still do on days when the outside air temperate is oppressive, but the place isn’t a greenhouse all summer!

There is an MIT spinoff company called Aeroshield that has created a very transparent version of aerogel to be used for very energy efficient windows. From the website they plan to have products for sale in 2026. It will probably be expensive but it is interesting. https://aeroshield.tech/

Not really on topic, sorry, but all I can think about when reading this article is the beginning of The Hudsucker Proxy.

Finally, people who live in glass houses will be able to throw stones.

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