Our Products, Our People, and Our Process
What separates Houston Window Experts from the competition? It’s something we like to call the “Three P’s”. The first “P” is Products we have 20 product lines to choose from. The second “P” is People. I genuinely believe that I have the very best people working here that I can find. They’re good, they’re friendly they’re skilled at what they do. Our people are honest, we just love our crews and we’re so proud of them. The third “P” is Process and it’s what we’ll be covering today.
What separates us from our competitors? Well to tell you that I’ve got to start with a quick little story. When I got into this business, about 10 years ago, I was a salesperson selling windows for another company. It was a great company with great people I still have a great relationship with today, but I learned some things that they did well and I thought I can do those things well and I learned some things that they did not so well and I thought to myself if I ever start my own business, I’m going to be doing that differently.
We Use Employees Over Subs
The main difference in the process between us and most of my competitors is we absolutely do not use subs for our work. Most companies use subs, it’s how they keep the cost down.
It’s how they can have more projects when they want to get busier during seasonal times of the year. When it’s slow, they can easily just tell those guys, “I have no work for you.” It helps them with their costs, but here’s what they lose. They lose control.
What a lot of companies do is they look at a list of all the upcoming jobs in the next week. They will send those to their installers and they’ll say, “What would you do this job for?” Then they look for the lowest bidder. They charge you so much for your window installation, then they go shopping to the lowest bidder for the install.
The bigger the gap is between what you pay and what they have to pay the more profit they make. You could end up with the worst installer on the crew because he’s the one who’s doing it for less.
So the incentive is wrong right away. Because they want to find a way to get out of there, to be fast, be quick, cut corners, cut costs, and get out so that they can still stay profitable and that’s not a good scenario for you.
At Houston Window Experts we pay our crew members by the hour. There’s no incentive to rush. There is no “hurry up and get done” incentive. There’s no “if we can put in more windows today, we can make more money today” incentive. The only incentive they have is to take their time and do the job right. So that’s the biggest difference.
We Measure To Fit
Here’s a second difference that you’ll find when you have a sub putting in your windows; a lot of times they are looking for a way to cut corners. Here’s one of the things they do. Instead of measuring the window to fit tight, to actually work in the opening perfectly, they’ll knock off a quarter of an inch or a half of an inch. I’ve even seen them knock off an inch. We’ve posted a picture below, so you can see some of the finished work of some of my competitors.
Think of how much quicker and easier it is to slide an undersized window into an opening than it is to actually work hard to make a window fit really nice and tight. There’s a consequence to that. You end up with a bunch of caulking around a perimeter instead of ending up with more glass you end up with less glass and a lot of caulking around the edge.
We Use The Best Caulk
Which brings us to caulk. A lot of subs use the cheapest caulk money can buy because that’s all included in their bid, and the cheaper the material cost, the more money they make. We don’t do that, we use the best product available, OSI Quad Max.
OSI Quad Max is the best caulk in the world. In fact, I sold a window job to an engineer here in Houston and he asked, “What caulking do you use?” and I said, “We use OSI Quad Max.”. He said, “You’ve got the job.” without even seeing the price because he actually worked for the company that makes the chemicals that go into OSI Quad Max and he said that he difference between good caulk and bad caulk.
We buy by the pallet and it costs us ten dollars a tube; you can google this online you’ll see it’s about twelve bucks a tube on Amazon. The weak link on a window project is the caulking. It’s just not going to last as long as your window in Houston’s climate. The better the caulking the better the project’s, going be.
We Use The Right Screws
Another thing the other guys will do to save money is they use the cheapest screws money can buy. Typically, you’ll see some of those inch and a half zinc plated screws. Not us, we use the right screw for the job.
We use three and one-eighth-inch polymer-coated screws that have cross-threading. There’s threading that goes into the wood and then at the very head here, it’s cross-threaded to the other side.
Why? What does that do? That allows this to serve as a stabilizer and anchor into the window frame itself. It’s pulling in one direction at the house framing and in the other direction at the window. That creates tension between your wall and your window so that your window doesn’t travel.
Why? Because windows expand and contract with changes in temperature, it gets hot it expands. As it gets cooler it contracts. Your window ends up moving which makes your caulk fail because it can open up a gap between the two. Not when you use screws like these. These screws are expensive, but it’s worth it to get the job done right.
We Use The Best Foam
And guess what else we do? We use another OSI product, their Quad Foam. It’s a minimal expansion foam, not the stuff you buy at Lowe’s and Home Depot. It does not swell up and create a big mess or put pressure on the window frame. It swells up just the right amount to make a good seal. It’s also a closed-cell foam; which means that once it cures it’s actually smooth. If any moisture ever got behind your wall it’s not going to get soaked up into the foam.
That’s just something we think is important to do. We inject foam all the way around the perimeter to create a foam barrier between the cavity of your framing and between the window itself so that we have a good tight connection between the window and the house. Why is that important? If you spend all this money on a great window that’s airtight and it works really well but then you can slide your credit card between the house and the window. What good is that?
We Use Our Trucks, Trailers, & Tools
Not only do a lot of subs cut corners on materials, they typically have to use their own vehicle, trailer, and tools. The equipment’s usually not the very best. In fact, a lot of times you’ll see an open trailer, loaded with windows, flying down the freeway.
You just spent 10 or 20 or 30 or 50 thousand dollars on windows and they’re hauling around in an open trailer. Rain’s coming down and there’s road grime coming up and there are rock chips happening to your glass. We don’t do that, we use enclosed company-owned trailers that are wrapped with your windows safe inside.
We Move Your Furniture & Blinds
Ask this question to the other guys. “Who’s gonna move my furniture? I’ve got furniture that needs to be moved in order for you guys to get to the windows. Who’s gonna take the blinds down and shutters down? Who’s gonna put them back?”
Is that on you or is that on the installer? In our case, we do all of that. We move the furniture, we cover everything up, we put everything back. We take the blinds down where we need to and we put the blinds back up.
You’re not gonna have to do any work. You hired me to do that work. I should be the one doing that. A lot of my competitors don’t do that. Ask them about the disposal. What are they gonna do with all these old windows that they take out? Where does that go? Where does the glass go? I cannot tell you how many times I’ve driven by a neighborhood where I see windows being installed and they’re actually leaving the scrap aluminum bundled laying in somebody’s yard. Or they’re putting stuff in your trash can.
We’re Insured
Do those guys have insurance? Are they gonna be able to show you they have insurance? We carry a four million dollar insurance policy, we carry workman’s comp insurance and we have vehicle insurance.
Of course, we hope nothing ever happens. Safety is a priority for us. In the event something tragic were to happen at your home we want to know that we’re covering you, your home, and your assets.
