I'd take the Elements, i have had problems with the Barrington's head and sill arching on larger units.Keep in mind the air numbers are done in a lab with a 25 mph speed.In most cases your house will leak elsewhere before the windows.

Agree, the Elements is the way to go. The 2 highest quality vinyl windows are Soft Lite Elements and the Okna 800 series ( also called the EnviroStar) . Whenever someone wants structural integrity, those are the 2 that most pros's always seem to recommend.

This post was edited by mmarse1 on Sat, Mar 15, 14 at 12:38

Another vote for the Elements.

4 out of 4 suggest that we should go with the elements. I can't argue with those numbers. Thanks to all of you for taking the time to reply.

Its a great window. Kudos to you for your foresight as you plan your new home. For most new construction projects, windows are an afterthought at best. You will be very pleased 10-15 from now when your neighbors are replacing theirs and you are sitting pretty. :)

I received an e-mail, and I would rather reply to it here so that I may be able to get more opinions on my thought process.

"+1. The Elements is the only choice imo. Much better product. I'm a big proponent of the performance ratings, but in this case I don't think that they truly do justice to the difference between these two. Remember that this should be a one-time purchase, and that $ difference can be averaged out over the service life of the windows which should be 30+ years.
What other improvements have you done to your home? AIr sealing, etc? .... I only ask because I'm confused by your logic with the air exchanger. It will not make your home tighter, in fact it is necessitated when you have an extremely tight home already. The best way to determine this would be to have someone come out and hook up a blower door if you have not had that done already.

HomeSealed_WI"

We are building a new home, and I am a licensed contractor. I have been reading a lot about air infiltration, and will be using best practices for installing the house wrap and windows. I am aware that make up air is now required because of homes being built tighter, but am under the impression that a air to air exchanger would be beneficial in heating the incoming outside using the inside air as a heat source.

The last time I checked, Air to Air exchangers were $1000, but I haven't done any research on them recently to determine what the cost / benefit ratio would be. Would it be worth $1000?

I can tell you that in the past I had ice form on the outside of my water softener, due to a make up air duct dumping cold air next to it. I fixed that problem by shoving an old shirt into the duct work. While effective, I do realize that Carbon Monoxide can be an issue.

Matt, thanks for the response to that. I actually edited my post because I initially made those comments under the assumption that this was an existing home. I then re-read your post and saw that it was new construction.
I think that you are on the right path with both the window choice and the air exchanger. It would be a wise investment IMO.

Double post. Sorry :-(

This post was edited by Matt1963 on Wed, Mar 19, 14 at 17:22