Acrylic windows

[willshak]

It has to be. Eyeglass lenses are made of polycarbonate.

[cavedweller]

Jean: I'm not sure what your concern is for your existing vinyl. If a panel is damaged it can be replaced easily (you will need the glazing and some spline and a sharp knife and a spline roller). Those windows are quite durable but they ARE a little short of optical quality. An unbendable sheet of acrylic is going to require some different method of attachment than the rolled-in vinyl you have now.

[cavedweller]

He doesn't. He has vinyl.

[David Nebenzahl]

On 6/16/2010 6:55 AM Jean spake thus:

Ah, so, it's all clear now. Well, not all that clear, but I get it.

As others have said, maybe you just need to learn to live with the vinyl. I once put up vinyl storm coverings on a sunroom, which kinda bugged me at first with their less-than-perfect optical quality, but soon got used to the view through them. And I appreciated that they didn't fall apart in the sun and weather like sheet poly does.

Sorry, don't know anything about acrylic.

[Frank]

Did not realize they made vinyl windows. I would imagine acrylic would be much better. Light stability is good and it does not contain plasticizers as used in PVC which often bleed out. I would imagine light transmission is better with acrylic.

I glazed a basement window that kids had broken kicking ball with acrylic several years ago and it still looks fine.

[hrhofmann]

Are these more or less double hung style, or are you talking about jalousie windows?

[cavedweller]

Perhaps like this?

[clare]

Tempered glass IS safety glass - but so is laminated, and Jersey glass - the stuff with chicken-wire in it.

As you should be able to tell, I was responding to the " When tempered glass breaks it disintegrates into fingernail sized pieces with relatively non-sharp edges: it can take quite a beating."

[clare]

Compared to the flexible vinyl sheet? Night and day!!!

[larry moe 'n curly]

For clarification??? Freezer bags are made of low density polyethylene, not vinyl, which is far more permeable to moisture and causes frost build-up inside. I haven't seen vinyl used as window glazing except temporarily, such as for insulation (double glazing) during the winter. All glazing I've seen was made of glass, acrylic (Lucite), polycarbonate (Lexan), or polyester (translucent but not transparent; for fiberglass reinforced panels, such as used for skylights or solar heating collectors).

Polycarbonate isn't naturally sun resistant, and for car headlight lenses it's coated with an anti-UV glazing because ordinary polycarbonate will become translucent otherwise. Acrylic holds up great to sunlight (notice car tail light lenses don't deteriorate, unlike polycarbonate headlight lenses) but it will develop a yellow tint. Polycarbonate is stronger and sometimes used for bulletproof windows, but I don't know how scratch resistant it is, although regular polycarbonate, like the kind used for DVDs and CDs, doesn't polish nearly as well as acrylic does.

Normally, "vinyl windows" refers to windows made with vinyl frames, and the vinyl is treated to make is highly UV resistant, but if they're like vinyl gutters, you can't paint them any dark colors (dark means anything but white or yellow, and even light blue is dark for infrared purposes), or they may slightly melt or warp from sunlight in hot weather.

[larry moe 'n curly]

Polycarbonate eyeglass lenses almost always have an anti-scratch coating applied to them. Without it, they scratch as easily as CDs and DVDs do, meaning much more easily than acrylic.

[Jean]

Perhaps like this?

Yup, those are the type of windows that I'm talking about - good find!

Jean

[clare]

Lots of commercial brown vinyl windows around here, as well as wedgewood blue. No problems I've seen. It's not Florida, either, but in the summer we get a lot of strong sunlight and 90+ F days.

>

[cavedweller]

.....and that proves?

...and the OP could have referred to "vinyl glazed" windows and you would have understood it better?

[cavedweller]

Notice that that's a Canadian supplier....the original concept is Florida based. You shouldn't have trouble finding repair materials.

[Ron]

The OP was just trying to give us a visual, but since you are so anal, maybe you should concentrate on what *you* write.

There is no such thing as bulletproof glass.The proper term is bullet- resistant glass.

[larry moe 'n curly]

You're being trivial. Freezer bags aren't vinyl, and polyethylene is rarely used for glazing because it's not clear enough.

"...but since you are so anal, maybe you should concentrate on what

*you* write."

[Ron]

Nice non-answer about "bulletproof" glass.

[Ron]

And you are being anal. The OP was trying to give us a

*visual*.....would have been happier if the OP said, "the material is kinda like a clear shower curtain"?

[David Nebenzahl]

On 6/17/2010 4:52 AM Jean spake thus:

So now we see. So tell us, is the material the same kind of sheet vinyl you'd buy in the hardward store, or is it thicker? Seems like it'd have to be thicker than just the thin sheet, since they clain that it can withstand "that grandchild [that] just fell against it again". How thick would you say the material is?