If you never lived where it snows and were moving North to where it does snow, what would you have liked to have known? What would you do to prepare?
What is north for you? I see so many tips being the dumbest things I’ve ever heard of.
Like plastic wrap on your windows. Sounds like something stupid Americans does instead of buying proper insulated windows.
Not saying I’m a expert. But I am a Swede and deal with snow and cold every year.
You should see the difference in available windows in the states vs Europe. Its like you are in the 23rd century and we are still in the 19th. Our boomer class raced all the way to the bottom to increase profits, so many things are just cheap plastic here. We can special order windows like you have, if you want to spend $4000 per window.
What you consider normal is exotic here.
Windows like we have? It’s just two panes of glass with a gap between the panes for air to act as an insulant.
Even with plastic windows, you can have two panes with a gap and it will work too.
I believe you. I just really struggle to comprehend that not being standard in parta where you get snow and cold. Or it being considered “extra”. It’s not alien technology. It’s two panes with a gap between them. That’s it.
We DO have double pane windows. Just not in areas that have middling weather. Or construction before 1990 or so. Or in older mobile homes, which we have a lot of. And the houses with double pane windows are often poorly constructed, sometimes in the homes, sometimes in the windows, and often both.
Energy has historically been very cheap here, so efficiency has never been a priority. That is changing now.
The videos I’ve seen of northern European windows just seem to have a ton more features than ours.
Lots of houses/apartments in places like Boston, etc. have old, drafty windows that landlords don’t bother to improve. Lots of hardware stores here sell kits containing double-sided tape and sheets of a special type of plastic. You surround the window with tape, place the plastic over it, then use a hot hair dryer to shrink the plastic until it’s snug. You can hardly see the plastic if you do it right, and it does a great job of dealing with drafts.
