Window tint

[WD40]

I recently added almost clear tint to all my house windows, it stops a lot of UV and heat from getting in the house, it has reduced inside temps by at least 10 degrees.
As a test I put some on my front windshield and side windows, only the top 6-12 inches as it was scraps. It definitely helps lower temps, If I could I would do all the windows.
Here is a link to the product I used.
Energy Film - Energy Efficient - Insulating Window Film

[darkdan]

Interesting product, no adhesive? Is it the super thick rubbery static cling stuff with horrible clarity? The thicker a film is the lower the optical clarity.

TSER of 48% is pretty good, if it's true.

Take the "infra-red" rejection with a grain of salt as there is no standard test of IR rejection.

Considering the price, I'd rather it have an adhesive. The films I install have a lifetime warranty against bubbling or falling off, I can't say that much for static cling.

[WD40]

darkdan, I think there was an adhesive version as well, I chose the static one for the house in case I needed to remove it.
Yes this is a little thick buy clears up to be not so distortable.

[C3H8]

I use to be a lab technician at an optical. i ground plastic and glass lenses to fit people's vision perscription. part of this process is making sure the glass or plastic lenses had at least 94% uva and uvb blocking capability. we had a nifty little machine which shine a special uv light and you would hold the glass or plastic eye glasses lens in the light. there was a sensor behind the light, and the lens, which measured how much of the uv was blocked or absorbed by the lens.

most of the time it had to block at least 94%, as i said. if it did not meet this criteria, we had special liquids which we could immerse the lens in, under about 180 degrees of heat for a period of time to increase it's uv blocking capability.

standard cheap cr-39 plastic lenses which most people have in their eye glasses do not naturally block the uv rays. they have to be immersed in that chemical i mentioned for about 10 minutes to build up enough of the chemical to block the uv rays to an acceptable level.

polycarbonate lenses which are used in all safety eye glass lenses as well as childrens glasses naturally block uva and ubv rays to near 100% according to the machine i had.
a 1/8 sheet of polycarbonate from lowes also blocked the various uv rays to near 100%.

glass lenses used in eyeglasses naturally block uva and uvb rays to near 100% as well.

a few things i learned from this nifty machine was that uva and uvb are naturally blocked by the glass used in eyeglasses without any special coating or films. being the curious as a cat type, i "borrowed" the machine one weekend and took it home to test my car glass and my house's windows.

what i found was that the car's rear and side windows blocked more then 94% of the various uv rays. the windshield blocked nearly 100% of them. this is not surprising since the windshield of most cars is laminated with some sort of plastic, i think polycarbonate?!?!. some one correct me if i am wrong on that.

adding just a few percent of tint to a car's side window resulted in near 100% uv blocking. adding limo black like i currently have on my car did not increase the uv blocking by much since you cannot block more then 100% when 100% is all of the uv rays. but limo black seems to greatly decrease the time it takes my hot ass interiour to cool off during the day when i get in the car and its scalding hot inside.

so to re-cap,

car glass blocks most of the uv rays right off the showroom floor with no tint at all.

windshield do it even better even with no tint.

adding dark tint somehow helps keep the car drastically cooler

its good to "borrow" things.

and yes i got fired from that job... you figure out why.

[gasstingy]

I had a Regal with mildly tinted windows, tinted by a tint shop. At about 7 to 8 years old, the tint started to get air bubbles in it. When I finally got tired of the air bubbles, I took it to a tint shop and paid $50.00 and they put it under a heat lamp for a few hours and then scraped it off with what looked like a plastic scraper. {I've scraped off tint before and it was too much like work. }

That said, my daughters Altima windshield was tinted with a nearly clear tint made for rejecting heat that she swears works well. The rest of the windows were tinted at the same time, but they only used the clear stuff on the windshield. It's on my to-do list to have the clear stuff put on all of my car windows, right after I get cruise control.

It seems to me that if we could come up with a reasonable method to insulate a vehicles interior and then use a heat rejecting window film on all of the windows {if it would actually work}, increased FE would be easier to accomplish. The concept works at home.

[darkdan]

I've got a UV meter. Tempered automotive glass stops about 65% of UV light. More importantly, is what part of the spectrum (I'm guessing UVB and not the more dangerous UVA).

Windshields are laminated with PVB and from what I've heard of people with other types of UV meters (mine requires it to be slide over the glass, some just need to be on one side) windshields stop about 85% to 90% of UV light. This is one of the big reasons why dashes don't crack as much anymore.

gasstingy, it works at home because the air conditioner gets turned off. If the tint on a car could make it so people would turn the AC off for a while, then FE would go up.

[darkdan]

Here we go.

Clear annealed, passing 89% of UV light (so blocking 11%).



Automotive tempered glass (2005 Ford Focus, my new car), passing 40% of UV light:



Automotive tempered + Geoshield 50% ceramic tint, passing 0% of UV light:



This meter is actually for eye glasses. As you can see the scale is 1 - 3% transmission as "safe"

[euromodder]

I've just been quoted 450 euro / 589 US $ to have 5 windows on my V50 tinted.
At that sort of pricing, I'd rather slab some foil on them myself.

[darkdan]

Europe is about the only place that still has decent prices for tint (from a tinter's perspective). It's not just a product, but it's a service so the skill of the installer is important.

But DIY tint always looks horrible. Don't take your classy car (I've always wanted a V50) and ruin it's appearance with a DIY job.

[roflwaffle]

Originally Posted by darkdan

Now, having said all that. Will tint give you better MPG?


Most likely not. The only time it would really help is on the rare days that it will allow you to be comfortable enough to turn off the AC and keep the windows up. As we all know, if the AC is on (no matter what setting) it's still turning on that compressor. So it's really an all or nothing kind of thing.

That depends on the car. W/ older models that's usually the case, and in order to reduce the cooling people will turn up the temperature, which just mixes the cool air w/ warmer air. On newer vehicles, the cool air tends to be stored and gradually let out so the AC compressor can cycle on and off depending on the temperature the occupants want, so for newer cars it can help w/ gas mileage.