An issue that St Augustine Innkeepers have always battled is: Street noise.
But it's the perfect storm – that against us all. You see we are in a hustling and bustling old city that is full of tourist each weekend. Those folks are here to have a good time, they might get loud as they walk the streets, or maybe there is a festival in town, or maybe you have live music playing down the street... Combine that with a beautiful old house, close to the streets, with old-world sash-windows, which by design are loose in their tracks, and are single pane... There is no doubt; you are going to hear street noise!
Naturally we think of adding storm windows. Sure they are not pretty on an old house (some cities won't let you add them to old homes), and they are not that ‘tight' of a seal anyway. So you look at replacing the windows altogether. But for an old house you might have to use ‘custom' sizes $$... and you have to have every room in the house torn-up, in a construction zone, for weeks... who wants that?
So we are trying a new option indows. A great guest told us about indows; they are a sheet of acrylic (not breakable glass) with a soft gasket around the outside parameter, that you insert into the inside of the window opening to create an inside storm-window, or in our case an inside sound-barrier. They come in different thicknesses, tinted, black-out, and opaque for privacy.
They have a bunch of helpful videos to answer all your questions & how-tos.Product_Laser
We have moved forward with this indow product. After a quick rough-size estimate, we sent them a deposit. They sent us a measuring kit (in the future they will have a distributor in our area to do this step), and spreadsheet to fill-out, and we did that part, easy-squeeze. So now they are manufacturing our new indows and we should have them in 4 – 6 weeks.
Stop the noise! Stop the drafts! Keep the charming old windows!