Tuesday, January 7, 2014

What to do about those drafty windows... (part 1)

I don't know if I've mentioned this before, but my husband and I live in an apartment. Now, my husband is just about the most handy guy I know. I literally believe that he can fix anything, but he is not used to living in an apartment. He's used to having a house, where if sometime breaks you just fix it.

So when we noticed that every single window in the apartment was drafty what was my husband's first thought?
Oh, I'll just caulk and re install the molding. No big deal.

Um, yes big deal. I really don't think that the leasing office will be thrilled with you taking apart their windows, even if you will fix them.

So we did what normal people do, and we contacted the leasing office to see if we could have their maintenance people come and take a look at it. This is what they said:

"With the draft in your windows we refer you to go to lowes because they have an actual window insulation kit there that is super easy to put up."

Uh.. what? Really, we have to do it ourselves? Can't you at least send someone out to take a look? Nope, apparently not. Thanks.

So what did we do? Well, we went to Lowe's. There's one right next to the apartment complex and like I said, my husband knows his way around a power tool or two. We went and picked up some foam insulation and we installed it in the windows. We picked up one roll and were able to take care of most of the windows in the apartment.

during all of this, we were also dealing with a thermostat issue (that didn't get solved, but got dealt with), so between those two big changes we made, we were really hoping to see some improvements in our heat situation. I mean, we had a window problem, the management told us to get a foam insulation kit at Lowe's & fix the problem ourselves. We did everything they told us to do, so that should have fixed the problem... right?

Wrong:
Can you see the ICE? I can...
This is the picture that we took after we had already added the foam insulation... Ugh. We contacted the management again to see if they would send someone out to take a look at the problem. Because to me, frost/ice on the inside of the windows kind of seems like a problem.

This time the management did send someone (we had another un-related issue that needed to be looked at as well). I wish I had kept the work-order sheet or at least taken a picture, because the adive was priceless.

Put plastic up!

Thanks... thanks a lot.


Stay tuned, there's more to come.


2 comments:

  1. So I switched back to using Firefox, and I remembered that I had had you on my bloglist. (Chrome, apparently, does not import live bookmarks.) And lo and behold, you are blogging again!

    This is that one friend of yours who moved to California to attend biochemistry grad school, by the way. Not nonnie at all!

    Anyway, I am pretty sure that, arctic vortexes or no, this is the apartment owner's responsibility. But I am more worried about where the water is coming from. If the sealant foam is properly sealing, then you have a leak in the wall somewhere. Definitely something the owner should be paying attention to, because fixing them later costs way, way more. Maybe put it that way to get a real response?

    Poke me with chat or email or something. I haven't heard from you since the wedding!

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    1. Hi! How are you? I miss you! I need to re-install AIM so that we can chat some time. :o)

      The water's coming from our humidifier. At least, I'm pretty sure. It's just so cold that all of the extra water in the air is freezing onto the window frame. Grr. We're trying to take care of it, but it's going slowly with all of the other things going on in life.

      Life is busy.

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