How Many Ways Can We Write Low-Emissivity?

Whether you’ve seen it written Lo-E, Low-E, Loe, or LoĒ it all means Low-Emissitivy. This is an invisible insulating coating for your windows and glass patio doors. You might have seen this terminology on different websites and maybe heard the term been thrown around. So what the heck does this mean and is it important when replacing your windows and patio doors?

Window Insulation for Energy Efficieny

Replacing your windows without Lo-E is the same as putting up new walls without any insulation between the framing and drywall. From the interior and exterior of your home it will look the same, but pretty quickly as the weather changes you’ll notice extreme heat in the summer months and cold drafts in the winter. As well you’ll hear every car, neighbour and noise traveling loudly through the walls and windows. Every window and glass patio door we install has Lo-E technology to achieve energy efficiency and meet building codes while reducing cooling and heating costs for your home.

As mentioned, Lo-E stands for Low-Emissivity: The ability of a material to radiate energy is called its emissivity. When heat or light energy is absorbed by glass, it is either convected away by moving air or reradiated by the glass surface. In winter, these coatings can halve the rate at which a window loses heat compared to an uncoated glass window.

UV Protection For Your Home

All windows emit (or radiate) heat in the form of long-wave, far-infrared energy depending on their temperature. This emission of radiant heat is one of the important components of heat transfer for a window. Thus reducing the window’s emittance can greatly improve its insulating properties. Standard clear glass has an emittance of 0.84 over the long-wave portion of the spectrum, meaning that it emits 84% of the energy possible for an object at its temperature. It also means that 84% of the long-wave radiation striking the surface of the glass is absorbed and only 16% is reflected . By comparison, our low-E glass coatings can have an emittance as low as 0.04. This glazing would emit only 4% of the energy possible at its temperature, and therefore reflect 96% of the incident long-wave, infrared radiation.

Enjoy All-Season Comfort

Year-round thermal comfort is mainly the result of two things:
1. Blocking oppressive solar heat gain in hot weather, thus maintaining cooler glass temperatures.
2. Reducing heat loss in cold weather, thus maintaining warmer glass temperatures.

Lo-E glass is coated with a low-emittance material designed to reflect heat. A window made with Lo-E glass repels ultraviolet rays that generate heat during the summer and keeps heat in during winter. The better insulated the window glass, the more comfortable and consistent your room temperature will be.

Cardinal Glass

The glass used to create the sealed units for all of our windows, patio doors and vinyl french doors are made by Cardinal Glass. We measure the replacement window or patio door to the exact dimension, Cardinal Glass makes the sealed units to size and then Vinyltek adds the frame and other components to build the window. You can read more about the innovative technology from Cardinal Glass here: Performance Stats

If you have any further questions, or you’d like an estimate on replacing your windows for high performance products and start seeing the energy efficiency contact us today!