Window Replacement in Pittston, ME

Vinyl window replacement fits the Pittston houses built around and after the town's 1983 median, whose first insulated glass may now be fogged between the panes. That fog tells you the seal of the insulated glass unit, two panes joined as one, has given out, and we replace the whole window rather than the glass alone.

A frame of that age is often square and dry, which makes an insert, a new unit made to fit inside the existing frame, the sensible and lower-cost call. On the new unit's NFRC label, look for a U-factor of 0.30 or less (the lower the number, the less heat escapes), the line Maine's adopted energy code draws for this climate zone.

Wood window replacement is the right call for the 19.3 percent of Pittston housing built in 1939 or earlier, where an old wood sash and its pane pattern belong to the house. Pittston's National Register listings include the Pittston Congregational Church where Routes 27 and 194 meet and the Colburn House State Historic Site on Arnold Road.

We found no local historic review in Pittston, and on a pre-1940 house we still match the pane layout the house started with, using simulated divided lites, grilles fixed to the glass inside and out. A wood-clad sash stays wood indoors, ready for paint or stain, behind a weather face of aluminum, vinyl or fiberglass.

Entry door replacement in Pittston starts at the threshold: a sound sill lets us hang a new slab on the old jambs, while a sill the awl sinks into means a prehung door that comes with its own frame and sill, set on a new sill pan. Harvey's entry door guide recommends a sill pan, and without one it calls for three heavy beads of sealant under the sill, carried 3 inches up each side jamb.

Pittston is a town of owners: 81.0 percent of its occupied homes are owner-occupied. ProVia's install guide wants a drip cap over the door and low-expanding foam in the gap around it, and if the subfloor under the old threshold is soft, you see it, with its written price, before the new door is hung.