My home is 24 yrs old and has Marvin wood casement windows. During my annual window painting exercise, I noticed that all the west facing windows and a few on the east side have loose joints in the lower half of the window frames. On a few windows the pins that hold the mortise and tenon joints together are loose and beginning to protrude above the frame. Almost all the windows have developed horizontal cracking running with the wood grain especially where the bottom brick mold meets the brick sill. Scraping revealed cracks on the exterior of the wood, but nothing on the interiors as they appear to be fine. Over the years I haven't had to do anything but paint as they have been faithfully maintained otherwise. In addition to the wood cracking, I now have one window where the seals have failed and the glass is foggy so I'm beginning to think this is going to begin happening regularly due to their age.
I know I can replace the glass in these windows, but my question is whether
24 years is about the expected life expectancy for wood casement windows? If I need to replace them I know I can get the exact same windows from Marvin in either wood or vinyl clad, but is the clad window worth the extra expense.Thanks in advance for any comments.