It can be terribly frustrating when you watch your home energy bills increase even though the actual cost of the energy remains the same! What is going wrong? The answer usually lies in your home’s structure- insufficient insulation, draughty doors, and the most common culprit: old, single pane windows that are so energy inefficient you might just as well leave them open all year!

If your home’s windows aren’t up to modern standards, then you are wasting energy and your money paying for it! If this sounds like what’s happening in your home, the time has come to take a good, hard look at the construction of your windows. All across Australia thousands of dollars worth of energy are being sucked out of inefficient windows every year. The best course of action is to purchase replacements, consider putting in a double glazed casement window that’s filled with argon gas, a sure way to reduce your home energy costs!

Old windows are usually single-paned, or double-paned but filled with air, making them draughty and very inefficient. This poor construction will lead to heat loss through the glass, which also means money loss! The solution to this is to put argon gas between the panes instead of just air.

Argon gas is a safe, colourless, and odourless gas that is so perfect for the job it has become the standard choice of window manufacturers. Argon has a thermal conductivity 67% that of air, and it comprises nearly 1% of the atmosphere. It can be isolated industrially at a very moderate cost making it a relatively inexpensive option. Double-paned windows filled with argon gas help to insulate a room as it minimizes the transfer of heat through the window’s glass panes. The system is also available in triple-paned windows which have both spaces between the glass panes filled with argon gas, doubling the amount of insulation provided.

Argon gas makes your home’s windows more efficient because argon gas is quite a bit denser than air. By adding it to the glass unit in double or triple-paned windows it greatly improves the efficiency of the thermal insulation. When argon gas is used in conjunction with a special low emissivity (low-E) glass coating, its presence brings the window’s temperature closer to the room temperature. This process very effectively eliminates drafts and air currents that are caused by different temperatures meeting in living spaces, making them much more comfortable to be in during seasons both hot and cold, all while saving you money on heating and air conditioning costs.

It is true that injecting argon gas into double or triple paned windows is initially more expensive than cheaper, air-filled window panes, but the long-term benefits of better energy efficiency are well worth it. Now that more stringent energy codes are being imposed year after year, maintaining higher efficiency standards are no longer an option, they are a requirement that must be met when you are having new windows installed. 

If you are considering replacing your old windows, then installing argon gas-filled windows will absolutely help you improve your energy efficiency while lowering your home’s energy costs.