Fall is the last easy chance
Once real winter arrives, exterior window work becomes unpleasant and sometimes unsafe. Everything below is much easier in October than in January.
1. Clean the exterior glass
Not just cosmetic. A clean surface sheds water better than one with mineral buildup and grime, and you're heading into months where the glass gets constant moisture. It also means you spend the darkest part of the year with the most light you can get.
2. Clear and dry the tracks
This is the one people skip and the one that causes actual damage.
Tracks collect grit, leaves, and dead insects. That debris holds moisture. Moisture in a track through repeated freeze-thaw cycles expands and contracts against the frame and the seal — and over years, that's how frames warp and seals fail.
Vacuum them out, wipe them dry. Ten minutes per window.
3. Check weatherstripping and caulk
Walk each window and look for:
- Weatherstripping that's gone hard, cracked, or compressed flat
- Caulk with gaps or splits at the exterior perimeter
- Any daylight visible around the frame from inside
Cold air infiltration is a comfort and energy issue, and it's cheap to fix before winter and miserable to fix during.
4. Make sure gutters above the windows work
Overflowing gutters dump water down the face of the house, directly over the windows below. In winter that means ice forming on and around the frames. If you're doing gutter cleaning, that's part of window prep too.
5. Handle the condensation question
Some interior condensation on cold mornings is normal — it's humidity in your house meeting cold glass. Reduce it with bathroom and kitchen fans, and by cracking blinds so air moves across the glass.
Condensation between the panes is different, and it means the seal has failed. More on that here.
What we'd hand off
Ground-floor windows and tracks are genuinely DIY. Second-story exterior glass and gutters in October are the ones worth paying for — cold ladders and short daylight are a bad combination.
Book the fall visit before the weather turns. Get a free quote.