I just had two nice, young college age boys stop by my house. They were in the area representing a window installation company. Their company is trying to drum up business by setting up appointments for their “consultants” to tell me how their energy efficient windows will save me money on my energy bills.
That’s a sales pitch that only works for those who don’t think about it. I have thought about it, so I made them think about it.
I asked a simple question: “what’s the payoff time? how long would it take for the new windows to pay for themselves?”
Well, they tried to duck the question. “That’d be a great question for our consultants…”
I interrupted: “Do you have a ballpark estimate?”
“No.”
“Tell your consultants to send you out with a ballpark next time and I might be willing to talk.” I didn’t let them leave me a flyer either.
I’ve done the math on this before. My gas / electric bill is $170 a month. Installing new windows throughout the entire house will cost us between $2500 and $7000, depending on the make, model, and installer. It’s a simple problem of division. Assuming their windows were miracle windows and eliminated my entire energy bill (hah!), it would take between 15 and 41 years for my new windows to pay for themselves.
There are many good reasons to install new windows. Energy efficiency is not one of them. Not even close.
I think your math was a little bit off – with “miracle” windows, it would have a payoff of 15-41 months.
I still mainly agree with you though – the payoff is too long to replace the windows completely for efficiency reasons.
My best guess math: $2500-$7000 to replace windows 30% tax credit gets it down to: $1750-$4900
If your heating costs come to $100/month (for gas in the winter, AC in the summer), then if you have really old windows, you could decrease by 20% (again, rough estimated guess).
$20/month, comes out to 80-240 months. So, I think that the actual payoff would be 7-20 years.
Still – if you have older windows that are falling apart, or hard to open/close, or really are quite leaky, it might be worth doing it.
D’oh! I knew something felt wrong about my math. 7-20 years definitely feels closer to being right.
And there are definitely good reasons to replace old windows. Ours have gaps between the screens and the window frames letting in lots of bugs. That’s a definite incentive to shell out some cash.
But, I still don’t think energy efficiency is one of those reasons. Especially when the payoff will come after we’re planning on moving out and selling. I’d have been more impressed with the sales pitch if it had involved more than just energy efficiency.