As the weather warms up, you may notice that your Indianapolis home windows start making odd sounds throughout the day and night. You may be wondering where those sounds are coming from, and if you need to be concerned about your home’s safety. Here are a few of the most common explanations for popping home windows and what you need to know.
Heat Expansion
The best explanation for why your windows are popping is due to heat expansion. When the weather warms up, the atoms that make up your window frames and siding start to expand causing the material to push against the other parts of the house. Some materials are more sensitive to heat than others. For instance, aluminum windows and siding tend to be very reactive to heat, while vinyl and Fibrex materials do not expand as much or as fast. The popping sounds you are hearing are likely coming from those materials moving against one another as they expand and then contract back into place when things cool down.
Redirected Heat
We have found that heat expansion and popping around your home windows may increase if you upgrade your windows to Low-E Glass without replacing the surrounding materials with a heat-resistant option. This is because Low-E Glass causes some of the sun’s rays to bounce off of the window instead of passing through, which causes a concentration of heat in the window frame and siding immediately surrounding the new glass. The only way to prevent popping, in this case, is to upgrade your window frames or siding to a material like Fibrex that does not expand as drastically in response to heat. This is also extremely important because the excessive strain on your window sashes caused by the extra heat could eventually cause your glass to crack and cause other damage.
Poorly Installed Windows
In some cases, the popping noise in your home windows is actually the product of poor installation practices. For instance, if your windows are installed out of plumb or level, it is possible that heat is falling on the windows at an angle, becoming concentrated in a single point, and causing the window frame to expand against parts of the house that it would not normally be in contact with, or allowing the window frame to expand of out the space where it should normally sit. If this is the case, you will need to call a professional to inspect the window in question and fix the installation to prevent damage.
If you are hearing window popping from one or more of your home windows, we invite you to call the team at Renewal by Andersen of Indiana today at 866-609-5033. Our technicians can inspect your windows to ensure they are properly installed, or give you a free consultation to get you out of aluminum frame windows and into a more reliable window material.
