Outswing tends to be a more sure tight weather seal. If it's inswing you have to keep in mind if there is anything in the way of the swinging door in the interior of the home. For outswing you need to remember door landing (steps), roof over hang (in the way of the swinging door if it's tall).

I don't have any experience in Andersen's A series so I can't really comment. When it comes to the Wood Ultrex Integrity windows I have almost never seen any issue with them and they look great.

The only thing dumber than combining wood and vinyl into one "composite" mixture, is to have 2 separate materials in 1 product.

The only thing that I would touch from Andersen is the E-series, and that is not really even their product. I prefer the Integrity, but if you want wood, I'd settle for nothing less than the Ultimate.

I agree that the A series has a slimmer profile. I am not sure that I am sold on the fibrex material.

I have seen it on some installed windows (secondhand albeit) where it did not hold up well.

"A" series is pultruded fiberglass, not Fibrex.

Renewal and 100 series are fibrex

I always miss that distinction on those.

Thanks for the catch Oberon. Hope you and the family had a happy Thanksgiving.

I lean toward the Marvin personally, but both products are pretty solid by most accounts.

WoW,

That's an easy one to miss for sure!

I had a great Thanksgiving, thanks,

I hope that you and your family had a wonderful holiday as well!

Take care!!

I need to correct the fibrex question. A series frame is fibrex and the sash is fiberglass (Page 24 of the A Series catalogue for Professionals). Seems backwards to me as I would think you want the stronger component (fiberglass) to be the frame material but I am sure Andersen engineers have a reason for deciding that.

My thought on that would be that the frame is a bit more heavily dependant on quality installation and subsequent support from shims, fasteners, etc, whereas the sash is on its own... I have no insider Andersen info on that (nor do I even like fibrex as a material in general), just my thought on why...

I don't think you would have to shim the A-Series anymore than anything else out there. I think anyone who would screw up the installation of an Andersen would do the same to the Marvin or anything else.

I did not say that was the case Todd, my comments were regarding window installation in general. Thanks for your thoughts though, I'll clarify:

My point was that much of the strength and rigidity of any frame will be due to the installation, and perhaps that is why they used a weaker material in that area.

eastbay is correct that while the A series sash is fiberglass, Andersen does use fibrex in the frame.

My apologies for any confusion on that one. The last time I chatted with "someone" at AW about the A series they said that they were going to be full fiberglass; however my bad that I never followed up on that one before replying about the actual make up of the finished windows/doors.

If I recall correctly AW did look into both full fibrex and full fiberglass during development of the A series and I also seem to remember that they did produce full fiberglass versions of A series units at one time, but I don't know if they ever actually sold any that way.

Per "someone" who absolutely does know, A series is like 200 and 400 series in that the frame is actually clad wood rather than just fibrex (A series) or vinyl (200 and 400).

So to be precise, A series units use fibrex clad wood for the frame and pultruded fiberglass for the sash.

Again sorry for any confusion that I might have caused.

This post was edited by oberon on Tue, Dec 2, 14 at 11:43