@WoW Washington That makes sense. I went to your website and couldn't find a list of brands you sell. I'm looking for aluminum framed sliding windows with narrow sightlines. I'm aware of the uber luxury windows by Vitrocsa, Styline, and Skyframe, and their frames are about 1" thick. Gorgeous. But of course, the prices are as much as my entire home cost. I'm wondering if there's a narrow frame out there, maybe 2" thick, from a more economical standpoint. Milgard and Andersen are thicker than that. What brands do you sell on your site that have the narrowest frames, could you share? It's funny because I live in a old, modest beach house in Florida that JUST SO HAPPENS to have come with super narrow 1.5" frames. Even on my 6' x 5' sliding window. The frame is just 1.5" thick. Love it! But the company went out of buisness.

Hi ZIns, Oberon offered professional technical details so I will chime in with homeowner experience. Yes, even with Low-E, there will be fading. Depending on the amount and intensity of exposure and the finish, it is a matter of how much and how soon. In a situation where the sun is very mild and light, by the time fading is noticeable, it may also be time to refinish the floor. My guess is the floor is not receiving year-round exposure, true? The sun is stronger and deeper during some time of the year and weaker and less intense at other times, is that so? We have seasonal sun intensity problem too and solve it with a combination of solution. We use rugs to protect several sections of our floor during mid-Spring through late Summer. The rugs are removed to prevent tripping when we have visitors. The rugs are also removed around Autumn when the sun is low and the exposure is much less intense and shortening each day. We have old furniture in one area by our French doors and my wife made knitted coverings to cover the furniture. As necessary, we remove the covering when appropriate. Outside the French doors, we installed retractable awning so that during extremely hot summer days, the awning extends to provide cover without blocking natural light. Our goal is to not use any window treatment because we enjoy natural light and the views. Hope this helps a bit.

Thanks, WoW, but what I wish I could find out is what the U-Factor is for my 21 yr old, double-paned, low-E windows. My best guess is that it's somewhere between .55 and .40 but that's purely a guess. Our windows are of a lower quality than other brands. We've had to replace at least 5 windows due to failed seals; one of them has failed again. We're replacing 6 windows as part of an upcoming kitchen and DR remodel, plus the one window with a failed seal. We also have 4 windows with spring issues. They aren't easy to open and close, plus they make a racket when we do and I'm really tired of dealing with them. The other issue is that our existing windows have very little UV blocking. Since we plan to stay put for at least 10 more years and since we're replacing nearly half of our windows already, we fell for the "while we're at it" scenario and decided to replace all our windows. WoW, why do you think that we'd be better off going for as much passive solar energy as possible? At the time of year when passive solar heat would be great to have, we don't see the sun as much as we'd like. We do get lots of sun in summer. I grew up without AC in the Midwest (was well into high school before we got AC) so I know all the tricks to keeping the house as cool as possible in summer. However, even doing all of that, our upstairs gets really warm and our AC has to work hard to cool it down for comfortable sleeping. We can't open our windows to cool our house as often as we used to because too many neighbors have fire pits. My asthma and wood smoke are a life-threatening combination. I hate not being able to open our windows to cool evening breezes but I also prefer to stay out of the ER. Anyhoo, that's why we want to avoid passive solar heat gain as much as possible in summer.

We were also wanting windows with black interiors and exteriors. For us the local availability brought it down to a choice between Pella or Milgard fiberglass windows. The Pella offerings were somewhat pricier, and we could never quite understand the why of it. We wound up selecting Milgard Ultra, and we're happy with the end results. And Milgard's warranty was fantastic, as our landscaper accidentally hit one window with a stone and chipped it, but Milgard replaced the insert without so much as a blink. One factor is whether a particular manufacturer's black is acceptable to you. Milgard's is called Black Bean, which is a bit lighter than true black, and I fussed over this for quite a while. Pella's may have been very slightly blacker, but also not true black. Now that we can see the final product in place, it looks fine. Good luck on your project. Brian