Eau Claire Window Replacement, Doors and Storm Glazing
Every opening graded in writing before anyone quotes a product, across Eau Claire County and the Chippewa Valley
- ✓Every opening graded in writing
- ✓Sound sash kept, not scrapped
- ✓Repairs priced before replacements
- ✓Chippewa Valley crews on every job
Eau Claire sits where the Eau Claire River meets the Chippewa, and the housing around that junction was built by a lumber town in a hurry. Frame houses from the 1880s through the 1920s fill the neighborhoods either side of the campus, and almost every one of them has had its glazing changed at least twice.
What changed it was rarely comfort. From 1985 through 2017 a Wisconsin rental could not be sold until somebody certified its weatherization, and the standard behind that certificate asked only for two layers of glazing or a storm window. No performance number appeared in it anywhere. The cheapest compliant answer went on the house, and it is still there.
So we start every job by reading what you already own, opening by opening, before anyone talks about product. Some of those assemblies are sound and should be repaired for a few hundred dollars. Some should have gone twenty years ago. Telling you which is which, in writing and with a reason beside every line, is the part of this job we are actually useful for, and it is where we start every time.
Why Eau Claire Chooses Eau Claire Window Replacement
- ✓We grade openings one at a time instead of averaging a house. Most Eau Claire quotes price twenty-two windows identically; ours shows which six actually need to go and what the rest need instead.
- ✓We know what the old rental weatherization standard put on these houses and how to read it. A triple-track storm bought to clear a 1998 closing is a thermal component, and we test it before recommending anything.
- ✓We repair storms, balances, rollers and weatherstrip as ordinary work rather than as a way of avoiding a sale. On roughly half the houses we survey, the correct answer costs a fraction of a replacement quote.
- ✓We install to the water. Sill pan with dammed ends under every unit, head flashing lapped by the drainage plane, low-expansion foam behind backer rod, and weeps demonstrated with water before the crew leaves your property.
- ✓We handle the box, not just the glass. Weight pockets get sealed while the frame is out, bay seats and head boards get insulated to framing depth, and window wells get drainage before anyone orders a sash.
- ✓We say plainly what Wisconsin does and does not license, and we hand you the insurance certificate with your address on the holder line rather than a photocopy naming somebody else's job from two years ago.
About Eau Claire Window Replacement in Eau Claire, WI
We replace windows and doors in Eau Claire and the Chippewa Valley, and we spend as much of our time talking people out of work as into it. The reason is the stock. This city's older neighborhoods are full of frame houses that have already been through two or three rounds of glazing decisions, most of them made by somebody solving a different problem than the one you have.
So the survey comes first and it is written down. Every opening gets graded on sash condition, storm condition, jamb depth, squareness and sill, with a repair or replace call against each one and the reasoning beside it. You keep that sheet whether or not we ever quote the job, and you are welcome to take it to somebody else.
Do not hire us if you want a single number for a whole house of windows next week. We will not price twenty-two openings the same when six of them need work and the rest need a weekend of sealing, and if you already have a bid that does exactly that, the honest thing we can offer is to read your house and tell you which six they are.
Our Window Services in Eau Claire, WI
Energy-Efficient Window Replacement
Nearly every older house in this city already carries two layers of glazing at each opening. Whether that adds up to an energy-efficient window depends on which decade paid for the second layer, and on whether the outer one still seals to its own track.
Vinyl Replacement Windows
Vinyl is the default answer in the Chippewa Valley and it deserves to be, on the right house. It is also the material most often installed here for the wrong reason, because it was the cheapest way to satisfy a closing deadline between 1985 and 2017.
Fiberglass and Composite Windows
Pultruded fiberglass is the material that behaves best when the temperature swings hard in both directions, which is the ordinary condition here rather than an unusual one. It costs more than vinyl and it earns that on specific openings rather than on a whole house.
Clad-Wood Windows
Clad wood is the right answer for a lumber-era house you intend to keep, and the wrong answer for a house you intend to rent. That sentence decides more Eau Claire quotes than any specification on the sheet, so we put it at the top rather than the bottom.
Aluminum Windows and Storm Panels
Two very different products share this name in Eau Claire, and confusing them is how people end up disappointed. There is the aluminum prime window, which almost never belongs in a heated Wisconsin house, and there is the aluminum triple-track storm, which is on thousands of them.
Double-Hung Windows
The double-hung is the signature opening of this city's older neighborhoods, and the version you have is probably a box frame: two sash running in a channel, cords over pulleys, iron counterweights hanging in a hollow pocket built into the jamb on both sides. That pocket is the whole argument.
Casement and Awning Windows
A casement shuts by compression. Its sash swings in against a continuous gasket and the crank pulls it tight, which is a fundamentally better joint than two sash sliding past each other on felt.
Sliding and Gliding Windows
The horizontal slider is the signature window of everything built here after about 1975: the ranch and split-level stock in Altoona, the subdivisions off Highway 53 toward Lake Hallie, and most of the two-story apartment blocks put up around the same years. Understand what you own.
Bay and Bow Windows
Treat a bay as a small addition rather than as a window. It is framed, floored, roofed and insulated like one, and here it fails on those terms long before the glass gives any trouble.
Picture and Architectural Glass
Fixed glass is the cheapest daylight you can buy. No balance, no operator, no weatherstrip to wear out, and no joint that can be left open in a rainstorm.
Basement Egress Windows
The question of whether a bedroom has a second way out gets asked in this city by the Health Department, not by a building inspector. Rental properties register with that department, and the city housing inspection program surveys homes on a five-year cycle, owner-occupied ones included.
Laminated and Security Glass
Wisconsin has no wind-borne debris region and Eau Claire County is nowhere near one. Nothing in the code here asks a window to survive a flying two-by-four, and anyone quoting hurricane-rated glazing in the Chippewa Valley is selling a specification you cannot use.
Patio Sliding Doors
Patio doors got named directly in the old transfer standard. SPS 367.11 (2) (c) required them to be insulated, double-glazed or fitted with a storm door, which is why so many older Eau Claire decks still have a second door hung outside the first one.
French and Atrium Doors
A french door is a pair of doors sharing one opening, sealed at the middle by an astragal rather than a frame. That center joint is the engineering problem, and in real wind and real cold it decides whether the door was worth buying.
Entry Doors and Storm Doors
The old transfer standard reached front doors too. Where no vestibule existed, an inward-swinging exterior door had to be insulated, double-glazed or fitted with a storm door, and every storm door had to be self-closing.
Screens and Combination Storm Units
In most of the country a screen is a bug barrier. Here a great many of them are one half of a triple-track combination unit, so the same frame carries a glass storm panel for seven months of the year and does a thermal job.
Glass Repair and Sealed Unit Replacement
Fogged glass is a seal failure, not a glass failure. The sealed unit is two panes bonded around a spacer holding a desiccant, and when that perimeter seal loses its grip, humid air pumps through it on every temperature swing, the desiccant fills up, and the inner faces begin to mist.
Commercial Storefront Glass
The old rental weatherization standard carved out an explicit exemption for storefront windows: they were not required to be double-glazed. That one clause is why the ground floor of a good deal of older commercial property in this city is still single-glazed, decades after the housing above it was upgraded.
Storefront, entrance and tenant glazing downtown
Commercial glazing in Eau Claire sits under Wisconsin's commercial building code rather than the dwelling code, which means plan review, a permitted job and a specification that has to be right before glass is ordered.
We work on the rebuilt blocks around the confluence, the Barstow Street frontages, the tenant spaces carved out of Banbury Place and the older shop fronts along the river corridors.
Thermally broken framing with a warm-edge sealed unit is our baseline for any heated space, and entrances get hardware chosen to survive a decade of winters rather than a decade of catalog photographs.
- ✓Thermally broken aluminum storefront framing with warm-edge sealed units, specified for heated space rather than for price
- ✓Entrance doors in medium and heavy stile with continuous hinge, adjustable threshold and a closer sized to the door
- ✓Safety glazing audits on older frontages, identifying annealed lites in doors, beside doors and inside fall zones
- ✓Insulated systems installed behind retained historic frontages, prism transoms and structural glass bulkheads
- ✓Single-lite emergency replacement after break-ins, with board-up the same day and glass ordered against the measured opening
- ✓Tenant fit-out glazing coordinated with the permit set so the order matches what plan review approved
- ✓Curtain wall and window wall repair, including gasket replacement, pressure plate resetting and failed unit swaps
- ✓Portfolio surveys for property managers: every entrance and lite documented by condition, glass type and safety rating
- ✓Interior office fronts, borrowed lites and demountable partitions for tenant spaces in converted industrial buildings
Recent Projects Across Eau Claire County and the Chippewa Valley
How It Works
- Read the openings before pricing anything. We walk the house and grade each opening on its own: sash type and condition, whether the storm panel still tracks and seals, jamb depth, squareness across both diagonals, sill slope and any rot below the stool. The sheet lists every opening with a repair or replace call and a reason, and it is yours whether or not you hire us.
- Separate the repairs from the replacements. Most houses here split three ways. A few openings genuinely need new units. A larger group needs a storm rebuilt, a balance replaced or a perimeter sealed at a fraction of the cost. The rest are fine. We price those groups separately so you can see what the money is buying instead of being handed a single number for the whole house.
- Specify glass and frame opening by opening. A west-facing living room and a north bedroom do not want the same window. We pick frame material by exposure and movement, glass package by orientation and by whether sound or security matters at that wall, and we put laminated or triple glazing only where it earns the cost. Everything gets ordered against the measured opening, not a standard size.
- Install to the water, not to the schedule. Sill pan under every unit with the ends dammed, head flashing lapped over the frame by the wall's drainage plane, low-expansion foam behind backer rod at the perimeter, and weight pockets addressed while the frame is out. We demonstrate the weeps with water before we leave and hand over the warranty paperwork with the invoice.
What Eau Claire Customers Say
They surveyed all nineteen openings and came back saying five needed replacing and the rest needed the storms rebuilt and the sills sealed. Two other companies had quoted the whole house. The sheet listed every window with a reason next to it, and the final bill was less than a third of the other bids.
Basement bedroom for our daughter, and the wall turned out to be rubble stone. They walked us through the header, the well and where the drain had to tie in before anything was ordered. It took longer than we hoped and it was done right, which is what we wanted from that particular job.
Our 1907 house still has the original sash upstairs and I did not want them thrown out. They reglazed six of them, rebuilt the storms, and replaced only the two on the west wall that were past saving. Nobody else we called was willing to have that conversation at all.
Patio door had rotted the framing under the track and nobody had caught it. They pulled it, showed us the rim joist, fixed the framing and set the new door on a proper pan. Explained why the deck sitting level with the threshold was what caused it in the first place.
Service Areas
Eau Claire Window Replacement serves Eau Claire, WI and surrounding communities including:
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I need a permit to replace windows in Eau Claire?
Call the city Inspections Division first, because what governs turns on whether the opening itself is changing size. Wisconsin's Uniform Dwelling Code applies to one- and two-family dwellings permitted on or after June 1, 1980, and does not follow alterations into older houses unless a municipality has adopted it that way. Cutting a new opening, or enlarging one for egress, is a different matter and should be treated as permitted structural work from the start.
Why do so many old houses here have aluminum storm windows?
Because from 1985 through 2017 a Wisconsin rental could not change hands until somebody certified its weatherization under s. 101.122 of the statutes, and the standard accepted an exterior or interior storm as an alternative to double glazing. A triple-track combination unit was the cheapest way to clear a closing, so landlords bought them by the pallet and owner-occupiers bought the same ones. The requirement was repealed effective January 1, 2018.
Does Wisconsin license window installers?
No. There is no glazing license or window-installer license in this state. What the state does issue is Dwelling Contractor certification through the Department of Safety and Professional Services, which is what a firm needs behind a permit for work on one- and two-family dwellings, along with a qualifier who has taken the required continuing education. Ask any bidder to show you theirs, and ask for the certificate of insurance with your address on the holder line.
Is it worth replacing windows that already have storms over them?
Sometimes, and less often than you would guess. A sound original sash behind a triple-track storm that still tracks, latches and drains is a working two-layer assembly, and swapping it for a mid-range replacement window buys a smaller improvement than the brochure implies. The openings worth replacing are the ones where the sash itself has failed, the sill has gone, or the storm is beyond rebuilding. That is why we grade them individually.
What does the city housing inspection look at on a window?
Operation, water and escape. The Eau Claire city housing inspection program surveys homes on a five-year cycle and rental properties register with the Health Department, and what that survey cares about is whether a sash opens and stays open, whether the assembly is keeping water out, and whether a sleeping room has a second way out. Nothing in it measures thermal performance, which is why that decision stays with the owner.
Should I put triple glazing in a house in this climate?
On some openings, yes. Triple glazing earns its cost on large fixed units and on rooms you occupy in the evening, and it earns much less on small openings, on north walls under deep overhangs, and on any window that is already shaded. It also adds weight, which matters for casement operators and for double-hung balances. We normally recommend it on a handful of units rather than across a house.