A cautionary tale and call for advice:
I'm doing a full tear out replacement with aluminum clad wood windows.
Some research on the internet turned up Marvin, Weathershield, Jeld-Wen, Hurd, Semco, Loewen, Peachtree, and Kolbe as making aluminum-clad wood gliders/sliders.
In the process of vetting about 10 installers in the DC area and hitting window showrooms, Home Depot, real lumber yards, I had never encountered an actual glider until today. What I heard is "the construction is very similar to this double hung I can show you", which was sometimes accompanied by the salesman turning the double-hung sideways and moving it back and forth, saying "see?"
Well, it's not the same, to state the obvious. To begin with, in a slider, gravity pushes the window against the track, but in a DH, gravity pulls it across the track! Furthermore, confirming by inspection that a company makes a good double-hung does *not* indicate they make a good glider.
For example, I thought the DH Weathershields I had seen were passable, but I finally tracked down a Weathershield glider today and what a piece of garbage it was! Standing directly in front of the window, I had difficulty getting it to slide open. First it was hard to budge and second once it budged it kept bucking -- catching on the leading edge and rising up on the trailing edge. Plus the cladding job was abysmal.
OTOH, I leapfrogged the local Marvin showroom, where they don't have a glider, to visit the one in Northern Virginia where they do have one, and it's as well-made as everything else by Marvin, for whom I do not work nor do I derive direct or indirect benefit from plugging them. Part of the reason for the smooth operation is the fiberglass strip inside the groove in the base of the window that runs along the track. What's more, I called Marvin HQ and a nice Minnesotan spent twenty minutes on the phone with me explaining the finer points of their construction, gave me his name and direct number and told me to call back anytime.
After calling dealers listed on their websites, I've concluded the rest of the clowns mentioned above don't bother making examples of their full line of products available in the DC area.
If anyone knows differently and can point me to a showroom, I'd be delighted to check them out. I'd love to discover I have options for a decent aluminum-clad wood slider other than Marvin, since Marvins are very dear, but I have to be able to hold the competitor in my hands. I won't drop $20K installing a product in my house sight unseen.
Cheers,
ccs>ikyr