Product/Reduce costs:
Life cycle costs |
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LiteZone® has the lowest life cycle costs.
Triple pane glass units have a much shorter life than double pane glass units. This is because of the much greater stress on their edge seals resulting from changes in temperature and atmospheric pressures across multiple glass panes and multiple seals. The stress on triple pane due to the normal bulging of glass units under a solar load is about 4 times greater than for double pane. These stresses are larger in triple pane glass units with higher R-values because higher performance increases the temperature differentials across the glass unit. The glass unit becomes much hotter under solar load and on a cold night the external glass lite reaches much colder temperatures. This added stress further reduces the expected life of the glass unit.
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Because of these stress factors the expected life of a higher performing triple pane glass unit is in the 15 to 20 year range. Good quality conventional double pane glass units will commonly have a life of 25 to 30 years and sometimes more. This makes higher performing triple pane extremely expensive on a life cycle cost basis compared to double pane glass units.
Higher performing triple pane glass units are about twice the cost of double pane. But on a life cycle basis they are about 3 to 4 times the cost of double pane, because they will need to be replaced about 1.5 to 2 times as often. A LiteZone® unit with about the same performance as higher performing triple pane units will have comparable costs, however, because its expected life is more than 60 years, more than 3 times the life of triple pane, its life cycle cost will only be about 40% of the life cycle cost of triple pane. This calculation is just for the actual cost of the glass units. If you include the high cost of installing replacement glass units then the life cycle cost of LiteZone®, as a percentage of triple pane's, is even less. |