Two-Thirds of This Town’s Homes Predate Modern Windows
About 64% of Wichita Falls housing was built before 1980 — among the oldest housing stocks of any Texas city its size. That is not a weakness; it is the character of the place. The postwar grids of Faith Village, the brick ranches of Southern Hills and Tanglewood, the established streets around the country club — these are solid houses on real lots, built when builders framed square. What they carry, almost universally, is the glass of their era: single-pane aluminum sliders from the 1960s and 70s, or single-pane wood double-hungs older still, wearing storm windows like reading glasses.
What 1970 Windows Do in 2026
Uncoated single-pane glass in an unbroken aluminum frame is the worst-performing window assembly ever mass-produced — the frame conducts like the cookware it shares metallurgy with, and the glass admits nearly all the solar heat that strikes it. In practice: rooms that will not cool on the west side, condensation streaming on January mornings, hardware that no longer latches tight, and the constant low whistle of air moving where it shouldn’t. If that list reads like your house, nothing is wrong with your house. It is simply wearing fifty-year-old glass.
Replacing Windows Without Erasing Character
The good news about pre-1980 construction is that it takes replacement windows gracefully. Insert replacement preserves the original openings and trim — the new unit sets inside the existing square frame, so the brick veneer, sills and proportions your street shares stay exactly as built. Like-for-like styles keep the look: horizontal sliders where sliders were, single- or double-hungs where hungs were, the big living-room picture window replaced with a far better-insulated fixed unit of the same size. From the curb, the house reads restored rather than remodeled.
The Older-Home Checklist
- Egress in bedrooms. Modern codes expect bedroom windows to provide a minimum clear opening for emergency exit. Like-for-like replacement generally continues what exists, but if you are changing sizes or converting a garage, egress is part of the design conversation — your installer should raise it, not you.
- Lead-safe practice on pre-1978 paint. Homes built before 1978 may carry lead-based paint on original wood trim, and federal rules require lead-safe work practices from renovation firms disturbing it. An installer who mentions this unprompted is an installer you want.
- Sill and frame condition. Most openings here take inserts, but decades of west-side weather can rot a wood sill. Expect an honest opening-by-opening call: inserts where sound, full-frame where not — not one blanket answer.
- Storm windows can retire. A modern double-pane Low-E unit outperforms the single-pane-plus-storm stack and ends the twice-yearly ritual. Keep the screens; retire the storms.
The Payoff Curve Is Steepest Here
Efficiency upgrades obey diminishing returns — and old single-pane aluminum sits at the very start of the curve, where returns are steepest. The same money that nudges a 2005 house’s bills noticeably transforms a 1965 house’s. If you own one of the two-thirds, window replacement is not one option on a list of upgrades. It is the first one.