hi i'm jeff ludy the owner of houston window experts thank you so much for watching this video today i want to talk to you about pella lifestyle series wood windows and if you are a fan of this channel or if you're in houston and you're looking to learn more about windows today i've got something to show you that i think is going to be really helpful and informative you know i've been in the window business now for about eight years and we sell 20 brands of windows of door and doors and there's some things that every day i still learn a little bit and and so i guess if you're if you're learning you're still growing and you're still alive and that's a real good thing and so today i want to just talk to you about the lifestyle series now i'm going to have to mention a couple of other windows in the process and i think it might be helpful we'll put a link in here to to go watch the video i did on the overall product series for pella because having an understanding of where the lifestyle fits into that category for them would be really helpful but i want to point out a few things about this and then i want to contrast it to some of the other products so you understand what exactly is the difference between the lifestyle series and the pella architect series so the first thing i should point out about pella is that the consumer report this year's consumer report rated this window as a number one window and consumer report for a remodel when it comes to a wood product category so looking at wood windows for remodeling projects consumer report rated this number one and that's impressive they name it number one for its looks for its construction for its warranty for its efficiency overall package this was the number one window what i like about this aesthetically looking at it is that it does have what we call a transitional look it's not very very contemporary yet it's not very traditional and i'm going to show you more of that when we compare the the products together but if you look at this you'll see it's got a really nice narrow clean profile some nice flat edges to it very little detail or beveling not a lot of contours just pretty simple not super contemporary but not super traditional one of the things that you may already know but if you don't i want to make sure you understand is that this window on the outside right here that you're looking at is actually this is aluminum this is an aluminum finish that's clad over a wood finish on the interior you can see the wood interior on this on this particular one we actually had it pre-stained from the factory but you can see you have the stain option or you have unfinished wood options and then you have lots of different grid choices as well and this is a grid that's actually on the surface you can see here this grid is made out of wood it's stained to match the rest of the window and i can get this in a couple of different sizes and i'll go into some more specifics on that in just a minute this particular window is actually operable the window opens and it closes and it functions really nicely of course in houston we don't usually open our windows a whole lot but this one as you can see is a double hung window meaning that it actually opens from the top as well i kind of like that if you have a so you have a dog that likes us to tear at the screens when the windows open or a cat that keeps tearing at the screens if you have a beautiful day you could have your screen on and just open the top of the window maybe a foot or two and let some air through also if you open the bottom of the window and the top at the same time you know heat rises right so let's say you have a bedroom or something that only has one window in it it's kind of cool that the heat will tend to go out of the top and it'll draw the cool air in from the bottom and that's pretty cool i like that a lot in our particular setup here we put grids on top no grids on bottom and so don't get hung up on what you see as far as the grid is concerned because we can do just about anything uh with this product it's really a great product now one of the things about this product that you should also know is that this is using the very best glass in our industry this is this glass that they have in this pillow window is actually made by cardinal glass and it comes with several different options for different parts of the country obviously if you're way up north i'm originally from michigan right if you're way up north what's the goal right the goal is to keep the heat in and the cold out if you're down south where we are here in houston the goal is most of the year at least is to keep you know the cool in and the heat out so different glass packages are going to make that effective for where you live double paint options are available in this this is double pane triple paint options are available which are great in colder climates they're not quite as effective for us in a southern climate they also have some sound reduction packages that they make available for this window which can reduce sound they claim by up to 52 compared to a single pane window so there's a lot of things you can get out of this window for energy for for performance for sound reduction for durability it's a great award-winning window from a great company that knows how to make windows they've been around for i think uh gosh look at my last video i think it's 100 years or nearly 100 years now there are some things about this window that right away don't make it my absolute favorite and and i'm going to explain in just a minute that some of what you're going to get between this product and their architect series this is lifestyle between lifestyle and architect or some of the things i'm about to point out to you so look at this on this particular window you see how it goes up and down right what what holds this sash into place is this piece on the side here this is called a compression jam liner see i can compress it see how it moves that's a compression jam lighter now if you had a black window and you had a black jam liner you probably wouldn't notice this as much if you have a stained window like this and a black jamb limer jam liner it's noticeable i wouldn't say it's ugly or that i don't like it i'm just saying it's not going to be color matched to whatever i'm doing on the color of my wood now just so you know they do have two options available they have a color i'd call it a light gray it's not white but it's not gray it's kind of a light gray and then they have this black because think about this until recently if you wanted a black window inside and out on this lifestyle series and all they have is that light gray jam liner then you would be not liking that because it really had too much contrast so i'm glad that they did this this is really helpful so let me show you how this works so if i squeeze in on this okay then i can pull this jab forward on the sash i can squeeze that one and look that window actually tilts out so that i can clean it if i wanted to from the inside i've got a great video on double hung versus single hung and tilt windows you should watch that but i can clean this window from the inside but that's not really what this is built for what this was built for was for me to be able to make repairs to this window should something ever happen to and it gets damaged so what i like about this is they took a tip from the from the people who make the legos right and said let's make our components modular so that if we ever needed to make a change we could do that now this is a rare example but i had a lady one time who had windows that there was nothing wrong with them but she bought a house that had grids in the windows and she didn't want grids in the windows guess what we kept the original frame we kept the jam liner all we did was order replacement sashes put in the sashes instead with no grids so i like the fact that some of this is modular and it gives you the opportunity as a homeowner to to be able to fix something that you buy because windows are a big investment and if they break you want to have some way to be able to fix them if you had a seal failure on this if uh if a lawnmower broke this uh throwing up a rock or something that's how we would swap that out we'd make it where you could get your window back and you could be whole and and everything would be okay again now one of the things i like about the way they do aluminum cladding on this is if you notice down here in this corner the top piece running down right here is actually overlapping onto the horizontal piece why is that important well some window companies including pella back before this design was done like this you would have sometimes where there would be a chance that water would not shed down properly it would end up stalling right there on that corner and that became a weak point where water might penetrate underneath there or let's say for example if you had sprinklers in front of your i'm standing outside right and here's your front living room window and there's a sprinkler right here and that sprinkler keeps hitting this glass and hitting this glass and hitting this glass and if you're in houston like we are you know we have a lot of rain we have people running our sprinklers all the time when it's really hot a lot of moisture over a period of time would find its way back in there and that would cause this to pop off and because it would it would just begin to swell back there and start to rot well now with the way they do this okay they have a product with this shutting down okay this is called endura clad this that's what they named their extrusion with this shedding the water off of there and the fact that they use a product that they actually i hate to use this word but i call it marinate the fact that they actually marinate or coat or treat the wood now with another product that they that they i mean it's really something i think they invented this thing it actually causes the wood to not rot to not be damaged by termites and you're going to have no issues with the wood like you would with untreated wood now a lot of companies have been doing that well how does pella do it better well what pella does is pella first treats the wood after they've cut the product so for example this this board here let me switch to the inside again so i can show you this because i think this is really worth noting they did a great job of this this board right here that they cut this top piece out of probably started as a 12 14 20 22 foot long board okay from a mill i get that so some companies treat this wood and then when they make your window they have to cut that wood and then they cut that wood and then they don't treat the ends well pellet does it differently pella actually treats the product after the cut so that way every part of this product is actually treated versus the pre-treated product that then has cuts and you end up exposing the edges and by the way the edges are the parts that are most vulnerable look here in the front again where we're talking about this corner this is where that would intersect to this piece of wood here if anything's vulnerable it's the corner so the fact that pella does that i think is a really smart way for them to do that and i think it's really incredible that they would that they would think that through and that's why they have the best warranty this is right off their website but i think it's a terrific warranty too they have the best warranty uh in the united states in this category for wood windows so it's a lifetime limited lifetime warranty but you're not going to have these issues with rot and in houston that's what people are concerned about why would you buy a wood window in houston well you would if if you would if you knew you had something like this it's not going to rot that's important if it's going to rot you don't have it well protected it doesn't have some kind of a extruded aluminum on the outside then you could certainly end up having problems with that so what do you think of this window do you like it i think it's cool uh one of the things about this window is that you can get every shape imaginable so if you have a home that has a window that's rectangular like this no big deal if you have a house that has a sliding door we can fix that just about anything you want can be done with this with this window now there are some limitations to it on size because it's a little bit narrower frame than some of the other products that they make so when you have more wood you have more integrity when you have more integrity you can go with bigger sizes but for an average typical project it's rare that we find a project where we cannot use this lifestyle series product now let's talk about some comparisons for just a minute because that's kind of a little bit about what we want to talk about here is the the pillow line itself has this product they have the uh architect series and then they have some other products too like vinyl and they have the impervia which is fiberglass but this is their flagship product right here this is the architect series and if you look at the two side by side i want you to see right away that this is wider you actually have a wider profile on this which is why i mentioned that it can handle bigger sizes compared to what you see here on the lifestyle series so the other thing you can notice right away too is there's more detail there's like see how it has these like curved and beveled edges over here compared to this has just like a nice gradual slope instead it doesn't it doesn't look as traditional it's a little more transitional and also one of the things that you will notice right away is that this jam liner on this okay is color match they call this the luxury oh i love that word the luxury jam liner compared to the compression jam liner so that's going to be obviously a difference there now remember if you get a black window with a black jam liner i don't know that you'll know if you have blinds or drapes or you have shutters or whatever on your window that may not matter at all but it's it's worth me pointing that out to you the grid options on this are going to be greater you're going to have a lot more grits to choose from compared to what the grid options you can get on this okay so there's some limitations on that as well the hardware colors are going to be or the hardware options excuse me are limited compared to what you get on this so there's more choices here and you're also going to have in this particular product you're going to have a lot more colors to pick from so you only have 10 colors on this you have 27 colors on this for the outside okay and so if you're looking at a particular color that you just absolutely love it may not be available in the lifestyle series which would then mean you need to bump up into this architect series but if you're standing sticking to some of the standard colors that they offer you can do those in this product with with no issues whatsoever you can get seven wood species for the inside of this where you can only get pine on the inside of this product so there are some things that they did to streamline this product so that it's more affordable for them to make it and so that it reaches that price point for the consumer who says there's some things that i just don't need on this series and this series would fit me just just as well but from an aesthetic point of view you're going to find that this is a little more traditional this is more transitional now that's going to lead me to show you a third window because i have to or this story wouldn't be complete so signature series and lifestyle series signature series and signature series these are both signature series however within the signature series you basically have two styles of windows you have your traditional and then you have your contemporary so the contemporary style and this happens to be a casement window i don't have a double hung to sit side by side but i think you can appreciate already how you see the step down on this you have a step from here to here to there to there a bevel to the edge okay look at this this is just really smooth right you have one step over one step up and you're done so a lot of good clean 90 degree straight lines um look at the grid on this look at this nice just square flat grid okay this one over here lots of bevels this one over here fewer bevels so i guess i could have organized them left to right i would have said that this is traditional right then the next in line would be transitional and then the most contemporary would be the contemporary series so there are some things don't get me wrong there are places where it's critical to use these two products because of their capacity and their ability to make bigger things and and do more stuff or give you more hardware options or more colors or more woods options but this is a terrific product from pella i mean a probably the most recognized and most trusted brand name in the united states when it comes to wood windows and pella doing such a great job on this i think you're going to be real happy with it so let me tell you one more thing because i've been saving this for the very end oh wait next the last thing one more thing i do want to point out it clay i don't know if you can get it from this angle or not but come over this way and if you look here between those grids you'll see that little metal shiny bar that's called a shadow bar and if you watch my video about grids i explained grids and i also explained the pellet grids but i want to point out see that little shadow bar it looks like three pieces now you have an outside piece a middle piece and an inside piece on this one on the on the architect series they use what's called ilt integrated light technology fancy word but you can see how you don't see the gap in there i don't see i can't see through that inner grid like i can see through the inner grid on here so a little more refinement just one step above a little more luxury there a little more luxury here on these jam liners on the inside you also have a natural wood jam liner that matches the wood instead of that compression jam liner but for a lot of people this works and this may work for you because you know what this product is actually about 30 to 35 percent on average more affordable than their architect series sometimes we get the opportunity to maybe mix the two maybe there's a part of the house where this is important because you need this to look a certain way but then in other parts of the house we would use this product instead either way you're sticking with a brand the brand name of pella it helps when you go to resell your house you know you have a great warranty from the number one consumer rated uh remodel wood product uh from last year so thanks for watching this video if you're in houston area and we can help please give us a call we'd love to come out or you can come into our showroom and take a look at all of our products if you're watching from around the globe we have viewers all over the place thank you for watching as well if you need help in your area look up a good pillow dealer or maybe contact us maybe we know somebody in your area thanks again for watching and have a great day you