PREVENT your SLIDING WINDOWS from being JAMMED

One of the steps that I'm showing you, your windows will last for a very long time. Hey guys, Sean Young with American Window Concepts. And this video today is basically to show you what could be going wrong if you have a sliding window or a single home window that is hard to operate, you had it replaced, and now it's really hard to slide or hard to open. And I just kinda wanna show you some of the things that I've ran into over the years that would create this issue. On my sample window here, I'm gonna kinda show you what it is that I would find when I was a technician. You go to a person's house and the call is the window doesn't slide very well, it's very hard to open. And this window isn't very large, but if you had an eight foot wide by five foot tall window in the living room, that would be much harder to operate. So what I would look for first is, I would look in the track and look to see if there's any dirt built up in the track. And most times, there was. And black marks over the top of the track, and I'll show you why that would happen. First thing I would do is I would advise them, we need to try to keep these tracks as clean as possible. Whenever you're dealing with a window profile and the depth, any kind of dirt that gets inside the track is going to make this slide more difficult, make it more difficult to slide. So I would take this window up and out, which all sliding windows will do, and then I would show them all the dirt that would be built up here. So this bottom weatherstripping, as the dirt is getting past this screen, it falls in the crack that's between this mainframe and the sliding sash, and it falls, and it lands on the bottom weatherstripping. So the first thing you do when you have all this dirt built up is you take a brush and you just brush it all off, right? So you'll have nice weatherstripping all again. And I would just check it all the way around, make sure that you're good there. Also check your rollers. These rollers here are high quality, high grade, but they can be flattened. So back to when I was talking about black marks on the track what's happening is the dirt particles are basically making these little rollers skid across the top of that track. And it creates those little black lines, which if you were to take an SOS pad or a Brillo pad, you can get them off that way. But that's one of the things that you're gonna wanna check for is those black marks, rollers, making sure they're not flat, and then making sure that you go in here and clean the window track as well. Now, the cool thing about these dual-pane windows or even triple-pane windows is that you have a weep system. So you could actually take water and pour it into this track, right? So if you wanted some Dawn dish soap, you can get a brush, you can pour some water in there, get that brush, you can knock all that dirt loose. And don't worry about where the water's gonna go because it's gonna go to the outside of this window. There's a weep hole on each end. All that's gonna go outside of that weep hole. And so after you've cleaned this track, check the top, things of that nature. Make sure you just have a nice clean window. And then once you've done that, just reinsert your window, right? So now there's no dirt in your track, and then your window should, at that point alone, slide so much nicer. All that dirt has been knocked off. You've cleaned your window. And the last step, what I would do is add some kind of a dry film lubricant. You don't want any petroleum-based lubricants in your vinyl window. One, it'll discolor the vinyl, and the other is, it's an oil-based product. What happens is, if you sprayed some WD-40 in here, it would make the window slide nicer at first, but creates like a mud inside the track. And when you're sliding this thing back and forth, it becomes worse than what it was originally. So use a dry film lubricant, and you can look at different lubricants at Lowe's or Home Depot, Ace Hardware, and look for the dry film lubricant, and then look on the can to see that it's okay for vinyl products, and then you can apply it. And so I have a can that I will use. This is basically an all-purpose-by-spray way. It's a dry lubricant release agent. This is great for vinyl. And you don't wanna spray it directly on the vinyl, because what happens is, is that can also discolor the vinyl as well because of the propellant that's in here. So just take a little shop towel, spray the lube on here, and then just wipe it inside the track. And I like to do the bottom area and the top area. So anywhere vinyl is touching vinyl, I'm going to put this. So this is going to make it slide even better. So I'm getting it on the walls here, up on top again. Reason why is because any kind of friction that vinyl against this vinyl is just gonna get released. It's gonna make it slide so nice. I mean, even, this is just a shop window, and even that right there makes this thing slide incredible. So this is something that I would highly suggest to anybody of you at home that have a replacement window that is hard to slide. Again, originally slid beautiful, I'm sure, but in this case, check out what I was talking about. See for yourself and take the steps that I was talking about. It'll make all the difference in the world. As long as you keep the windows clean, you shouldn't have to apply this very much. It's every maybe six months. So if you get into a routine of cleaning your windows out and kind of doing the steps that I'm showing you, your windows will last for a very long time. You're gonna have less wear and tear, less springs breaking because they're under serious duress. So it just makes everything about the windows so much nicer, easier to operate. So I hope this helps. Definitely check out any other videos that we have on YouTube. I described low ease and different things of that nature. You can always go to our website, americanwindowconcepts.com. You can hit the contact button and we'll reach out to you that way as well. So again, thank you so much for watching. Have a great day. Bye.