Technobabble

D-I-Y Window Tinting (or not?)

Posted by on Jun 9, 2008 | 5 Comments

The thermometer hit 100 today and it’s only the 9th of June. It’s time to talk about the other kind of windows again … not Microsoft windows, but the windows on your home. Window tinting, specifically.

I’ve been giving a good bit of thought to installing D-I-Y solar window tinting on a handful of the windows here at Ranchero Indebto. In the summertime, the rooms on the eastern side of the house start heating up early in the morning, as the sun beats down upon them.

This is particularly troublesome, because my current home office faces east. On a warm sunny day, the office can start to overheat by 10:00 AM.

I’m hoping that solar window tinting will help to alleviate this problem.

Now if I had my druthers (and an extra ten thousand dollars or so), I would invest in electronically operated outside blinds or shutters for all the windows on the east, south, and west walls as they’re all prone to overheating at different times of the day.

Lacking the druthers (and the ten grand), I just might give the D-I-Y window tinting idea a whirl … starting with the home office windows. If it works (and more importantly, if my wife approves), I’ll try solar tinting on the other east facing windows.

  • Scott Gehret

    So where is the info on how to do this? I think the title is misleading. It should be “Thoughts on Window Tinting” or something similar. Not DIY which implies that instructions on how to will be in this article.

  • Gerry DiNunzio

    Chris,

    Don’t waste your time and money on window tinting. I had it done professionally at my home and it did not help at all. I ended up installing exterior solar shades from “Sun Setter Awnings” for about $300.00. That did the trick. You can actually feel the difference in the glass temperature on the windows without the solar shade. I used one of their ten foot shades on two windows to see how well it worked. So now I intend to do the remaining windows. I forgot to mention that I am installing the solar shades on a sunroom that faces south and takes a lot of heat. The past couple of days here have been 100 degress plus.

    Gerry D.

  • Mark

    Chris,

    I thought about window tinting at my home but I heard such a mixed results I never went through with it… I’ve got a huge paladian window that just lets in a ton of heat but from what i’ve heard and read window tinting is normally done on single pane windows and if done on double pane windows it can cause the window to crack when it heats up…. not sure if there are any glazers on this board that could chime in,

    I took a look at Gerry D’s link but it wouldn’t look right in my situation with the window being 2 stories up. it does look like a great product for sunrooms and covered decks…

    Mark

  • TK_M

    Hi Dan,

    A tint of a window is unlikely to do any good, you will need to affix a film that is REFLECTIVE.

    These are usually metalized polyester films and I’ve seen them where they reflect more than 98% of the light. They are not that expensive either.

    The comany I used to know doesn’t seem to be in existance anymore, but they did bronze, silver and even gold on the films. I don’t need it, so cannot speak of it from personal experience, but I was impressed with it and also that it was so much cheaper than I would have expected. You might want to look into metalized window films. If you think about it, a tinted window is really only for cutting down on GLARE – It looks a different color, as the colored film is absobing the other colors of light and emitting it’s energy as heat – Not what you want! A reflective film on the other hand, simply reflects a proportion of the light right back outside. You can choose the film that is best, as you can pick what percentage of the light you want reflected.

  • http://www.onewaywindowfilm.org/gila-window-film/ gilawindowfilm

    I’m not finished read this yet, but it’s so fabulous ‘n I’ll back again when I was finished my job :D