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This is a guide, not an inspection. Anyone quoting you should look at the window in person. Rather just ask? (231) 620-5061
There are three completely different things people call a foggy window, and only one of them is a broken window. Which one you have decides whether you need a new window or a dehumidifier.
If you can wipe it off with your sleeve, the window is doing its job. Warm indoor air is meeting the coldest surface in the room and dropping its moisture there. In a Northern Michigan winter, that surface is nearly always the glass. It gets worse in kitchens and bathrooms, and in houses recently tightened up with new insulation or a new furnace, because the house now holds moisture it used to leak. The honest answer here is usually not a window. Run the fan longer, vent while cooking, and if it is constant, a dehumidifier costs a fraction of a window order.
Dew on the outside of the glass on a clear morning means the window is insulating well. The outer pane is staying cold because your heat is not leaking through to warm it. Nothing is wrong, and it burns off with the sun.
This is the one that matters. If the haze will not wipe off from either side, it is inside the sealed insulating glass unit. Modern windows are two or three panes sealed around a spacer, with the cavity between them holding still air or an inert gas. That cavity is where the insulating value lives. When the seal fails, moisture gets in and condenses on the inner faces of the glass where nothing can reach it. The window still keeps weather out. What it has lost is the insulation you paid for.
It cannot be cleaned or re-sealed in place. The real repair is a new insulating glass unit, and on many windows that means a new sash rather than a whole new window, which is worth asking about before anyone quotes a full replacement. Where replacement genuinely makes sense: several units failing at once across a set of the same age, or frames that were near the end of their service life anyway.
More on this when you talk to the estimator, or see the window styles we install across Northern Michigan.
The seal on the insulating glass unit has failed. Moisture has got into the sealed cavity between the panes, where it cannot be wiped away. The window still keeps weather out, but the insulating gas layer is gone, so the glass runs colder and the room is harder to heat.
The seal cannot be re-made in place, and drilling and venting the unit trades the fog for a permanently uninsulated window. The real repair is a new insulating glass unit, which on many windows means a new sash rather than a whole new window.
That is usually humidity rather than a broken window. Warm indoor air meets the coldest surface in the room and drops its moisture there. Lowering indoor humidity often solves it without replacing anything.
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