Vinyl windows are new innovation that they are soon going to completely replace old-style windows. A lot of home owners currently have or are going to replace existing windows frame by vinyl material. There is a proof of this statement, especially if you go the western part of the USA such as in California, so you can see many house have used vinyl windows. However, even though there are plenty of benefit using vinyl windows, but when you have to replace the existing ones, there were some arguments that widely discussed about the retrofit process that this may cause to water leaks. In my personal opinion this is absolutely true if you do not do it properly. It is quite sensitive process that you have to carefully do the job. There will be water leak if you could not completely remove your tear out of your old window down to the studs and properly replace the new one. In fact, you have to make sure that you have done BOTH of these processes completely. Even though you have removed the tear out from the old window perfectly but there still are water leaks if you fail to replace the new windows effectively.

As a result, if you fail to replace new windows properly, you will have problems of water leak into your house. Let’s have California as an example; California is the area that has frequent rain fall throughout the season as it’s locates to close proximity to the ocean. So people who living in this area should pay extra attention when they want to install retrofit frames. Particularly, for stucco house, which home owners have to use thicker bead of sealant and seal on the outside of the window.

Some people may have another alternative of sealing material such as latex caulk. In fact, this material is working find but you have to bear in mind that the quality may compensate to its cheap price. So the suggestion is; if you just have more budgets, using 100% silicone is probably the best choice. However, even though using silicone is more effective but you have to consider about the total number of windows that you have because the cost will rise depends on the number of windows you have. For instance, in average the total cost for a tube of acrylic latex caulk is about one dollar, mean while the average cost for a tube of silicone is about four dollars and you have to use for about 3 tubes for a window, depending on the size of the windows but roughly it take about 3 tubes.

However we can reduce cost by using both type of sealing materials in stead of using only silicone tubes. I have learnt that we can use silicone with the most sensitive part of the windows and that part needs extra protection. I am talking about the top side of the window.
The top of the window have to face with strong power of water that comes directly from roof top, so it seem that this part must be more sealed securely than any other part of the window such as below or side of the window. Therefore, the idea is we only use silicone with the top of the window and use latex caulk with the rest and this will save you a lot of money.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -