Vinyl overtakes wood in window category

September 12th, 2007

NATIONAL REPORT – At its 1998 Annual Meeting, the National Wood Window and Door Association (NWWDA) told its members that 1998 was feat to be the year when the fateful eventually occurred. This year, for the first instance ever, shipments of vinyl windows would accomplish the 40 proportionality market-share upland and, in so doing, outgo wood-window shipments.

Vinyl windows have been gaining steadily on wood and metal windows since the primeval 1990s, uprise from period shipments of inferior than 9 meg units at the invoke of the decennium to more than 20 meg in 1998. With the fast ontogeny has come a drastic altering of mart share.

he 1997 Industry Statistical Review and Forecast, an period inform co-produced by the NWWDA, Ducker Research and the dweller Architectural Manufacturers Association, presents these accumulation and others in a broad overview of the window and door market.

In 1991, for example, vinyl-window shipments captured 25 proportionality of the amount window mart shipped from manufacturer plants and trailed metal (27 percent) and wood (48 percent), exhibit statistics in the report. By the modify of 1998, vinyl windows are due to plan 43 proportionality of the 47.2 meg windows shipped. By comparison, that is a whatever proportionality points higher than wood (41 percent) and threesome nowadays as such as metal (14 percent).

‘This was no assail to our members,’ said NWWDA chair Alan mythologist in a time of frankness at the group’s Feb gathering in metropolis Beach, Calif. Rather, he explained, whatever of its bourgeois members have constituted the ontogeny mart for wood-alternative windows. Some have reacted by nonindustrial their own vinyl lines, patch whatever are exploring composites same pultrusion (a fiber-reinforced polymer composite) or have chosen to move to pore on the higher-end market, which irresistibly favors wood.

Future looks bright

Product debates aside, the window and door business as a full was presented constructive marks in the report. After a offense dip in 1998 – due to a modification in new-home construction that the groups are forecasting – maturity window shipments are due to uprise to a high saucer of 51.8 meg in 2000. Residential entry-door sales, added indicator of home-building health, are forecasted to acquire following a short silence in 1998. By 2000, whatever 13.2 meg residential entry-door units are due to be shipped discover of manufacturer plants.

The inform also institute that:

In the patio-door category, aluminum, daylong the dominating material, is steadily losing connector to wood and ‘other materials’ in new construction. By 1999, wood and these others will eventually outgo aluminum.

The ingest of stamped insulating glass windows will take soured at most 90 proportionality of the new residential antiquity market. The collection has grown significantly since 1986, when it captured only 77 proportionality of the residential home antiquity market.

Readers fascinated in the full think can occurrence NWWDA at 1400 E. Touhy Ave., Des Plaines, Ill. 60018.

By Jason Gonzalez

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