Dual pane window glass replacement in Phoenix

A dual pane window is not a thick piece of glass. It is a sealed assembly of two lites, and when that assembly fails we take it out and set a new one while your frame stays in the wall.

Call (602) 777-3717 Monday to Friday, 7:30am to 5:00pm. A technician measures at your property, the written quote follows, and a custom unit comes back from a Phoenix fabricator in five to seven days.

What is an insulated glass unit made of?

Two lites of glass, held apart around the whole perimeter by a spacer bar, with the gap between them sealed shut. Glaziers call the finished sandwich an insulated glass unit, or IGU. Yours is somewhere between about half an inch and an inch thick overall, depending on who built the window and when.

The spacer is the part homeowners never see and the part that does the work. It is aluminum on older units and a warm edge composite on newer ones, and it is hollow, packed with desiccant beads that pull stray water vapor out of the trapped air so the cavity stays dry.

Two separate seals hold the whole thing together, and they have different jobs:

• The primary seal is a bead of polyisobutylene run between each lite and the spacer. It is the moisture barrier and the gas barrier. Nothing else in the unit keeps water vapor out of the cavity.
• The secondary seal is silicone or polyurethane applied around the outer edge, filling the channel behind the spacer. It bonds the two lites into one rigid panel and takes the mechanical load, so the primary seal is not being pulled apart every time the glass moves.

Nothing in that assembly is designed to be opened again. The unit leaves the fabrication line as one part and it gets handled as one part for the rest of its life. If some of that vocabulary is new, our window terminology page defines the rest of the terms a glazier will use at your house.

Air or argon in the cavity?

Plain dry air is the default. Argon is a heavier, slower gas than air, so it carries less heat across the cavity by convection, and most fabricators here will fill a custom unit with it on request.

Here is the honest framing for Phoenix. Argon works on conducted heat, the kind that crosses the gap because one side of the glass is hotter than the other. That is a real load in January and a minor one in July. The heat that makes a west room unusable in August arrives as sunlight straight through the glass, and gas fill does nothing about sunlight. Take argon if it is offered on your unit. Do not choose it over a better coating.

One more thing about gas fill: it leaks slowly through any insulated unit over years, and it leaks fast through a broken seal. A unit that has fogged has already lost whatever argon it held.

What does a low-E coating do here?

Low-E is a metallic oxide layer, thinner than you can see, deposited on one of the two glass faces inside the sealed cavity. It lets visible light through and reflects most of the infrared and a large share of the ultraviolet.

Phoenix UV is the part worth dwelling on. We get sun almost every day of the year at an intensity that fades hardwood floors, bleaches rugs along the sun line, cracks leather furniture and dries out artwork. A low solar gain coating cuts most of that before it reaches the room, which is why we spec it on replacement units even when the original glass had none.

Two practical points. The coating sits on an interior face of the unit, so it cannot be scratched off in cleaning and it cannot be added later to glass you already own. And which face it sits on matters: in a cooling climate it belongs on the second surface, counting in from outside, where it rejects heat before the cavity absorbs it. That is a spec on the order form, not something adjusted on site.

When do bronze and gray tints make sense?

Tint is not a coating. The color runs through the body of the glass, added when the glass was floated, and it works by absorbing light rather than reflecting it. That difference decides where it belongs.

Bronze or gray earns its place in a few situations. A west-facing living room where afternoon glare washes out a television. A front elevation where you want daytime privacy from the street without curtains. A house where the other windows are already tinted and a clear replacement would stand out from the curb. Bronze reads warm and gray reads neutral, and both darken the room a little.

Where tint does not belong: a north window, a room that is already dark, or as a substitute for low-E. Absorbed heat has to go somewhere, and a hot tinted lite re-radiates part of that heat inward. Tint plus a low solar gain coating is a good pairing. Tint on its own is a compromise.

Is triple pane worth it in a Phoenix house?

For most homes here, no, and we will say so before you spend the money.

A third lite and a second spacer cut conducted heat transfer by roughly 40 to 50% against a comparable dual pane unit. That is a genuine number and it is answering the wrong question for this climate. Conduction is not what drives your summer load. Solar radiation through the glazing is, and that is governed by the coating, which a dual pane unit carries just as well.

The cost side runs against it too. Triple pane units are heavier, which can push an old sash past what its hardware was built to carry, and they cost more to replace when a seal eventually fails. Money spent on a good low solar gain dual pane package, on every opening rather than a few, does more for the house than triple pane on two windows. Most efficiency advice you will read was written for cold climates and gets this backwards, which is why we put together a guide to energy efficient windows for Arizona homeowners.

Why replace the unit instead of repairing it?

Because there is no repair. Once the primary seal is breached, the cavity breathes with every temperature swing, moisture rides in with the air, and the haze between the panes is water condensing where no cloth can reach. Drilling and venting the unit clears the view for a while and leaves a broken seal behind, so the fog comes back and the desiccant is finished.

We replace the unit and the frame stays in the wall. That is the whole job. If fog or haze is what brought you here, our foggy window repair page works through the diagnosis in detail, including how to tell a failed seal apart from room-side condensation and what a failed unit is still doing for your energy bill.

How is a unit measured and ordered?

A glazier comes out and takes the measurement off your window, and there is more to record than height and width. The order sheet carries the sight size and the true unit size, the overall thickness of the sandwich, the thickness of each lite, the spacer width, the coating and which surface it belongs on, any tint, whether the lites have to be tempered, and any obscure pattern to match.

The thickness is where guessing goes wrong. Two windows that look identical from the street can take units of different overall thickness because different manufacturers used different glazing pockets, and a unit that is a sixteenth of an inch out will not sit in the stops. This is also why we do not quote a dual pane unit off a phone description alone.

The unit itself is built by one of several insulated glass fabricators here in Phoenix. We do not fabricate glass in house and we are straight about that, because it is the reason the timeline is short: a custom size is cut, sealed and cured locally, then delivered back to us in five to seven days rather than freighted across the country. Common stock sizes for sliding door panels move faster.

What happens on install day?

The glazier arrives with your unit and the sealant, and the work happens at the opening.

1. The stops come off. Every dual pane window holds its glass with some form of stop, a bead of vinyl or aluminum that snaps or screws into the frame, and it has to come out before anything else moves.
2. The failed unit comes out. Old units are often bedded in hardened sealant, so this is done with an oscillating tool and a chisel rather than by pulling.
3. The glazing bed gets cleaned back to a flat, sound surface. A new unit set on old crumbling sealant will not seal to the frame.
4. Glazing tape or structural silicone goes down, the unit is set into the bed and pressed home, and the stops are refitted.
5. The sash gets operated and checked. On a slider, that means it still runs and still latches with the new weight in it.

A single opening is usually a short visit. There is no cutting into the wall, no stucco patching, no drywall and no paint, because none of that is touched and none of it is work we take on.

What does the frame need, and what does it not?

Your frame stays in the wall for a glass replacement. What it does need is a glazing pocket that is sound, weep holes at the sill that are clear rather than packed with dust, and stops that are still flexible enough to go back on. Sun-brittle vinyl stops crack when they come off, and we replace those as part of the job.

What it does not need is a coat of paint, new stucco or a new frame. Frame fabrication, stucco and drywall repair around the opening, and painting are outside what we do, and we would rather tell you that at the measure than after.

Sometimes the frame is the problem rather than the glass. Aluminum sliders that have split at a welded corner, sashes bent out of square, or wood frames that have rotted at the sill will not hold a new unit properly, and at that point you are looking at window replacement rather than a glass job. That is not most windows. Most Phoenix aluminum frames outlast several sets of glass.

What moves the cost of a dual pane job?

We do not publish figures for residential glass because the same phrase covers a bathroom window and a nine foot patio panel. What we will do is tell you what the quote is made of, so nothing on it is a surprise:

• The size of the unit, which drives both the glass and how many people it takes to lift it.
• Whether the lites have to be tempered. Glass near a door, near the floor or in a bathroom falls into a hazardous location under code, and tempered is fabricated to size rather than cut.
• The coating and tint you are matching, since an unusual older tint takes more sourcing than a current low-E.
• Obscure or patterned glass, which is a narrower catalog.
• Access. A second story unit over a tiled roof line is a different day than a ground floor bedroom.
• How many openings are done on the same visit, since one trip covering four windows beats four trips.

How the quote, deposit and warranty work

A technician measures on site and hands you the price in writing. You owe nothing until you have that quote in front of you, and there is no charge for the visit.

When you approve it, a 50% deposit goes down before the unit is ordered. That is not a sales tactic. Your unit is cut to your opening with your coating on it, and if the job stops after fabrication there is no other house it fits. Hardware and stock sliding door glass sit outside that rule because they go back on the shelf.

Our workmanship carries a lifetime limited warranty for as long as you own the property. We have been doing glass in the Valley since 2010, we run a 50 mile radius out of 4202 E Elwood St #21, Phoenix, AZ 85040, and that address is a working shop where glass gets staged rather than a place to browse, so the measure happens at your house.

Questions homeowners ask about dual pane glass

Who builds the replacement insulated units?

Insulated glass fabricators here in the Phoenix metro, working to the measurement and spec our technician records at your house. We install rather than fabricate, and keeping the work local is what holds a custom unit to five to seven days.

Where in a house do dual pane units usually fail first?

West and south facing openings, and the ones with no shade over them. A west unit runs a wide temperature swing every afternoon for eight months of the year, and that daily cycling is what works a seal loose. North side glass on the same house is often still fine.

One pane is cracked and the other is perfect. Can you replace just that pane?

No. The two lites are sealed to a spacer as one part, and separating them destroys the seal that makes it an insulated unit. The whole unit is replaced, which is still a glass job rather than a window job.

Can you match the glass in my other windows?

Usually yes. The technician records glass type, thickness, color and coating at the measure so the new unit reads the same from the street. Discontinued tints from the 1970s and 80s are the exception and we will tell you at the measure if an exact match is not available.

Do I have to take tempered glass?

Only where code calls for it, which covers glazing next to a door, close to the floor, in a tub or shower area, and a few other hazardous locations. Everywhere else, annealed glass in the unit is normal. Tempered cannot be cut, drilled or notched after heat treatment, so it is made to size.

Can a dual pane unit have obscure or patterned glass?

Yes. Bathroom and stairwell windows often use it, and a pattern can go on the inner lite of an insulated unit like any other glass. Matching an existing pattern depends on whether it is still in production, which we check before quoting.

Will a new unit fit my 1970s aluminum frame?

In most cases it will. Older aluminum sliders in Phoenix were mostly single glazed, so if yours already holds a dual pane unit it was either built for one or converted, and either way the pocket dictates the thickness we order. Our single pane glass page covers what happens when the frame was never built for a sealed unit at all.

Is a foggy window an emergency?

No. A failed seal is a comfort and appearance problem, not a safety one, and the glass is not about to fall out. Cracked glass is the one to move on, especially in a door or a low opening where safety glazing is involved.

Book a measure

Call (602) 777-3717 Monday to Friday, 7:30am to 5:00pm and tell us roughly how many openings are affected and which side of the house they are on. A technician measures, you get the quote in writing, and the unit is ordered when you say so. For hardware faults rather than glass, start at residential window repair, and residential glass services lists everything else we handle at the house, including sliding glass door repair.

Which cities do we cover?

We work across the Valley, inside 50 miles of the shop on Elwood Street. Start with your city for what we see most in the housing stock there.

If the frame itself has reached the end rather than the glass, that is window installation and a different job.