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What kinds of screen materials do you offer?
- Fiberglass Mesh: Our go-to choice for low price and resilience.
- Aluminum Mesh: This material dents more easily than fiberglass, but for people living near farms where grasshoppers gnaw away at fiberglass mesh, this is a better long-term solution.
- Petscreen: This is useful for resisting tears from cat and dog paws, but if you have a large animal running into the screen, the pet can still pull the Petscreen mesh away from the edge of the frame.
Can you replace a broken or missing screen?
If you have a broken or missing window screen, we might be able to replace it. We have a limited inventory of window screen frames that we can use to fabricate a new screen for you. Our frames are typically painted in white or dark bronze. Our screens can be made with a spring loaded plunger to help retain the screen in the frame. The best way for us to match your screen is to bring the broken frame or a twin to the missing frame to our office for us to match up.
Why do I have black edges on my mirrors?
If you have a black edge on a bathroom mirror, it’s caused by water getting on the edge of the mirror and reacting with the thin silver coating on the glass. The black is silver oxide instead of reflective, metallic silver.
What types of commercial aluminum door hinges are available?
Commercial aluminum doors have three types of hinges:
- Butt Hinges. Most doors have three hinges. Older doors only have two. and tall doors may have four hinges to help hold the weight.
- Pivot Hinges. Some doors have a top and bottom hinge. We try to avoid this in our area because putting salt on the sidewalk can corrode the bottom pivot, which is made out of cast aluminum.
- Continuous Rotary Hinges. We often fix old doors with bad pivot hinges by installing a full height, continuous rotary hinge that is surface mounted. Some schools and high-traffic retail stores are built with continuous rotary hinges.
What is insulated glass?
Insulated glass is made up of two panes of glass separated by a spacer to create a more energy-efficient window. Residential windows usually use two panes of clear glass, whereas commercial windows may have clear glass or a tinted glass, like bronze or grey.
What is low-e coating?
Starting in the early 1990s, insulated glass manufacturers started using low-e coatings to improve the energy efficiency of windows. Low-e coatings are thin, metallic coatings that block infrared light, energy, and some ultraviolet light. As the coating technology improved, newer, more efficient coatings evolved. Today, most low-e coatings are made from a triple layer of thin silver atoms on the glass to block the infrared light from passing through.
What is argon gas used for?
Once insulated glass manufacturers started using low-e coatings, they also started filling the air space between the glass with argon gas, which transmits energy slower than normal atmospheric gas, which is primarily nitrogen and oxygen.
Why does insulated glass fog up?
Older insulated glass units sometimes get hazy or foggy and you can’t wipe it clean because the “fog” is between the glass. When this happens, water vapor has found a leak in the perimeter seal and worked inside the glass unit. As the temperature goes up and down, the water vapor condenses on one of the two inner surfaces. As the thin film of water sits on the glass, it pulls sodium out of the glass and deposits it on the surface of the glass, which causes the surface to look cloudy or foggy. If you have a triple pane window, you can have a seal failure in either the first or second insulated glass space, meaning triple pane glass is twice as likely to fog up as dual pane glass. Once the glass has gotten cloudy, there is no fix for the homeowner except replacing the entire insulated glass unit. You cannot replace just one pane of glass and fix the problem.