Windows in Oahu’s Tropical Weather

Hawaii is renowned for its beautiful weather, and Oahu is a perfect example. It’s warm, sunny and inviting for most of the year — a perfect place to live. But this island home of ours has its own fair share of quirks that you should always be aware of, particularly when you want to renovate your home. You need to carefully consider all of these quirks when choosing your windows in Oahu.

The tropics are usually known for having distinct rainy and wet seasons, but Oahu is a land of local weather patterns and longterm sunny outlooks. While it does usually rain a bit more in winter than in summer, overall the rainfall is pretty low, at least around the coast. Our base in Honolulu, for example, only gets about 20-40” of rain a year. Over on the Eastern coast you can expect almost double that, but it’s often in erratic bursts. 

So there’s lots of sun. Sun means three things for your home: light, heat, and UV radiation. One of those things you want lots of, one you want to control, and one you want to cut out entirely. Can you do that with windows in Oahu?

With Sunburst Windows of Hawaii, you can.

Windows that use light

To get the most out of your natural sunlight, you want a window with a nice, big glass area. To achieve this you want a streamline frame.

Wooden frames are traditionally very thick and take up a lot of viewing area. Vinyl is a popular, cheap alternative with a low profile, but isn’t a great choice in Oahu. All that sun makes the vinyl warp and crack over time.

The solution? Fibrex. It’s a mix of wood pulp and plastic, giving you the slender profile and easy maintenance of vinyl with the strength of wood. Get the most light in without sacrificing the quality of your frames.

Windows that cut down the heat

Heat is great in the summer when those temperatures finally dip a little bit, but you don’t want your home to be an oven. Insulation is the name of the game here.

Unfortunately, glass itself is a terrible insulator. Fortunately, you can make it an excellent insulator by using double panes on your windows. Using two sheets of glass instead of one traps a thin layer of air between them. While the glass might be a poor insulator, the air isn’t. This will help keep your home in Oahu cooler in the hottest summer days and warmer in the coldest winter nights.

If you’re renovating and get the chance to play around with the placement of windows in your home, you can also save on heating bills by being selective with where windows go. As we said in a previous article, northeast and southwest placements are best. You’ll get the least heat during the midday summer sun.

Windows that block harmful UV rays

Low E4 SunSmart window tinting will help not only keep out heat, but keep out UV rays as well.

So the final solution: double pane windows for insulation, Fibrex framing for durability and style, and Low E4 tinting to keep out harmful rays.

Low-E4 SunSmart tinting is specially formulated to be easy to clean. You’ll never have to worry about difficult window cleaning again. How easy is it? Just swipe down dust and grime with a dry cloth, wipe a mild cleaning solution over it, and you’re done.

So, are you looking to get the best possible windows in Oahu? Contact us today for an in-home consultation. We look forward to giving you the best windows to last you years to come.