It depends on where you live, and the local climate. If your house is cold and drafty during the winter, with high heating bills, then you might have to replace your windows to get some relief. The new windows will have tighter seals, and double pane glass. Also, the window frames will have been filled with expanding foam, or some other type of insulation. The down side to new windows is that they might not fit perfectly, they might not match up with your exterior woodwork, and they might not match up with your interior woodwork, either. If you live in a milder climate, with more reasonable heating bills, then maintining the original windows might be your best bet.

Your contractor is right. I've seen studies (using actual experiments) showing that old wood double hung windows fitted with old (but well weatherstripped) storm windows have significantly more insulation than new double pane vinyl windows. Another thing to consider is that the rest of your house most likely has poor insulation anyway- spending a fortune to replace the windows won't do much good if the heat just bleeds through the walls. I would (and did on my house) leave the windows alone, and fit good storm windows. It will look better, it will cost less, and it will work better.

Keep your old windows, rehabbing them if neccessary (something you may be able to do yourself). Only extremely high end,custom-made new windows will be aesthetically pleasing in an old house with siginificant period style.

Properly restored, your wood windows will equal the thermal efficiency of most vinyl replacements. If you added well-fitted wodden storms, you would have the best of both worlds.

The one thing about vinyl windows is that most of them will be less expensive (on initial purchase) than the cost of rehabbing your existing wooden windows. In the long run, though, I think the wooden windows will be cheaper to own, as they will remain in good shape, and if necessary can be rehabbed repeatedly, (though this is usually unnecessary if they are kept painted and weatherstripped). Vinyl windows that need restoration are just tossed and replaced again, and again.

The other unfortunate thing is that usually vinyl windows only come in stock sizes so the window openings are altered when they are installed; this is what gives replacement windows such a bad name in old-house circles. The windows result in a significant change in how the house looks.

I would check out Terry Meany's book Wooden Windows. There are other good resources to help you make this decision. If you need more info, please ask.

Molly~

Thank you very much for your input, you have been very helpful.

Is is possibel top weather strip old double hungs to make them as tight as any new window you could buy, and without changing the appearance.
Resource Conservation Technology has a large line of plastioc 'flipper' type seals that are installed in a very small grooves in the sides of the sash (and the top and botom of the upper and lower).
Add in some felt seal at the meeting rail in the middle and you have a very tight window.
The stuff is very inexpensive, it is the labor to remove the sashes, route the small groove, and then put everything back together that is expensive.
If you do the work yourself it is a very good deal.

Keep your old windows and weather strip them with spring bronze (killian hardware.com). Get new wood storms if necessary. Also, I agree that a copy of the book "Working Windows" by Terence Meany would be a great investment - it's the bible for maintaining and restoring wood windows.

Do not waste your money on new vinyl - it doesn't matter what climate you live in.

Hi,
Check this out for lifetime window weatherstripping systems. This interlocking metal type is longer-lived than any other kind. They have it for doors and casement windows, too.
Casey

Here is a link that might be useful: accurate weatherstrips

The problem with any metal weatherstripping is that it shortens the heat path a lot compared to plastic or other lower conductivity materials.
If one edge of the metal is at 20 F, so is the other edge. The R values are well below 1 (0.01 is not unlikely).
The more metal you use across the heat barrier the more loss you create.
Try Resource Conservation Technology (Baltimore, MD) for a large selection of plastic seals for doors and windows.

These windows can be made more efficient. Usually the biggest loss is through the sash weight pockets and the glass. There are companies that can install insulated glass panels into your windows. They will also replace the sash weights with a more efficient jamb mechanism. The sash pockets get filled with insulation. This Old House did this a few years ago to a house they were restoring. Don't know if the info is still listed on their Website.
Ron

We didwe had wooden windows made like what was in before.They were in bad shape.We had a restoration company make them.We have 22+ windows,Turned out great.only bottoms open and the storm is one piece,covers top and bottom.They all lock with a pin.Was about 900 a window but glad we did it now.

I agree that it's always preferable to restore your old windows. The payback time for energy efficient window replacements is typically over 20 years for old buildings, for just the reasons described above. Plus, vinyl on an old house? Blecch!

If you absolutely have to replace your windows, there are several wood windows on the market to choose from. We found them to be comparably priced to vinyl windows (just slightly more), very stylish, energy efficient and with a long life span. A few windows in our house were too far gone for restoration so we replaced them with Jeld-Wen wood frame windows from Home Depot. They are double hung, double pane low-E glass and have the tilt-wash feature for easy cleaning. The snap-in grid looks good enough you can't tell it from the original divided lites in the rest of the house without close inspection. They would have been even more reasonably priced if we could have done a sash replacement rather than the entire window frames. Unpainted, ours were only about $50 more per window than vinyl, and worth it to us because they won't need replacement in 20 years.

Please, please do not replace your wooden windows with vinyl. We have a beautiful 1889 home that had a PO who did bad things to it. One of the things PO did that we can't afford to "undo" is replacing the windows with vinyl windows. Yuck! We have old pictures of our house, so we know the windows were one over one like the vinyl. Thank God, at least the total look of the house hasn't been changed. And the original leaded glass doors and sidelights were not bothered. But it really hurts to think of those beautiful old glass and wood windows and then look at the pukey vinyl windows we have now. Old windows can be rebuilt if need be--a much better option than vinyl.

John Leeke is a preservation consultant in Portland, Maine, who specializes in restoration of old houses, particularly windows. His website is www.historichomeworks.com and is full of helpful information.

The department of the interior, in the list of publications on their website, www.cr.nps.gov, also has a series of preservation brief. Preservation Brief #9is on resoring your older windows