Neighbors helping neighbors. In a nutshell, that’s one way to describe the WindowDressers build. It happens in school gyms, American Legion Halls, churches – any place where a few tables can be grouped together, and people who didn’t know they had rudimentary carpentry skills can construct insulating window inserts that keep cold air out and warmer air inside a home, where it belongs.
A WindowDressers insulating window insert fits into the interior of a home or commercial window frame, with a foam gasket stretched around its perimeter to ensure a snug fit. Wooden frames are measured, screwed together, and two layers of plastic sheeting are drawn across them. The difference they can make is striking. They save money on heating bills. If you’re heating your home with any sort of fossil fuel, they will cut down the amount of carbon emissions you’re sharing with the rest of us.
And they just make a home more comfortable when those pesky winter drafts seep in to form a “cold spot.”
Older homes, in particular, a feature of the rural landscape from New England to Appalachia and further westward, stand to benefit from these easy-to-install additions to virtually any regular window frame. Plus, it builds on a New England tradition of community banding and building together. Neighbors helping neighbors.
The idea began in a church in Rockland, Maine, in 2010. The Universalist Church there ran an energy audit that traced theheat loss in the sanctuary to leaky aluminum-clad windows.
A church member, Richard Cadwgan, had learned about window inserts from a sustainable living conference he attended, hosted by the Midcoast Green Collaborative, a Maine-based nonprofit organization dedicated to community building. Impressed by the simplicity of the idea and its apparent effectiveness, Cadwgan measured and built 26 window inserts for the church as a Christmas present that year. It was a “win-win-win” – lower heating bills, fewer carbon emissions, and greater comfort in the cold winter months.
Not ones to let a good idea be a nifty one-off, other parishioners in the church wanted in. Orders were taken for 185 inserts the next year, and duly made and installed by Cadwgan and Frank Munro, the former congregation president. The following year, the pair took orders for 1,231 inserts. There was no turning back now. WindowDressers Inc., a 501(c)(3) non-for-profit organization, was underway.
But building 1,231 inserts is different from making 26. That’s where the “community build” came in. More hands, less work. And more coordination needed between measuring the window, cutting the window frames to size, stretching the plastic over them, and delivering them to the customers. But the model was launched. Community builds began to multiply, first across Maine, and then into New Hampshire and Vermont. This year, 52 community builds are planned across the three states of northern New England.
The main idea is building the inserts and saving people money, but the community-building part of it is also deliberate, said Donald de Voil, the WindowDressers program manager for Vermont and western New Hampshire.
“Obviously, a weatherization-based organization is interested in helping people save money on their heating bills, save energy use, and live more comfortably in their home in winter,” he said. “But I think that the model we use is very intentional in its desire to strengthen communities and build those community ties.”
An example of that was what unfolded at the American Legion Hall in Arlington, Vermont, last fall, as several area residents from there and other nearby towns gathered to assemble the WindowDressers inserts. The main meeting room of the Legion was a network of tables, some set up to put the frames together, others to wrap the plastic sheets across them, or heat them to make a snug fit, and then to wrap the foam strips around the exteriors. A quiet intensity prevailed as volunteers, some of them experienced in woodworking but many not, got guidance and instruction from the team leaders and set about making them.
Jim Salsgiver, one of the original organizers of the local WindowDresser build, which began back in 2021, was moving about offering help and advice where needed. There’s a process in place which breaks down the construction piece by piece, step by step, so the volunteers quickly gain confidence that they know what they’re doing, he said.
“I love the builds and getting together, meeting new people,” he said. “What’s so cool is somebody comes in and says, ‘Okay, well I signed up, but what do I do?’ And, you know, after three hours, they’re acting like pros doing it and excited about it and telling their friends. One of the best things is the build itself. It brings people together who would never see each other otherwise.”
But what goes into making a WindowDressers insulating insert?
According to the Midcoast Green Collaborative website, custom-made pine frames are wrapped in two layers of tightly-sealed, clear plastic film and finished with a compressible foam gasket. The foam allows enough give for the inserts to be easily slid into place in the fall and removed in the spring, while holding firmly enough to provide a tight, friction-based seal that stops drafts and adds two more insulating air spaces between your home and your window. The inserts are installed inside an existing window with no fasteners required. They function like interior storm windows.
The process actually begins in the first half of the year, when measurers from one of the local WindowDressers build groups arrive at homes, laser measuring tools in hand, and determine with pinpoint accuracy the dimensions of the windows and the pine frames that will need to be cut back at their production facility in Searsmont, Maine. Orders are taken, often for more than one window. Because of all the volunteer effort that’s involved, the price is usually much lower than would be the case if that customer went shopping at a hardware store.
Instructors conduct training sessions for group leaders prior to the community builds to explain how they are supposed to be built. (Photo courtesy of GNAT-TV)
And when the measuring team shows up, the hardest challenge in the whole process has already been met. Getting the word out about this opportunity to save money and increase a home’s comfort level is the hard part, said Roger Hanson, of the Northshire Build group of Bennington County in Vermont.
“I think probably the biggest challenge is actually getting information out to people to get customers coming in,” he said. “With the demographics, I think too many of the people who truly need them in houses don’t have good Internet access, and aren’t always out in the public. So we’ve really looked at where we’re advertising and where we’re pushing this so that we make sure we get in touch with people who may not be on the Internet.”
But once the word does get out, whether it’s through word-of-mouth at the local coffee shop, a social media connection, or the local newspaper, there’s another opportunity for savings when the measurers show up. They will often be not just measuring and assessing whether an order is workable, but also ready to ask if the potential customer might want to apply for some savings benefits. Each customer is expected to help out for at least one four-hour shift during the build that helps save some money, but if the local WindowDressers group has been successful at fundraising it can offer the inserts at a discount to those who may be underfinancial stress already.
“We’re always trying to reach people who are in need of the inserts, where they’re really struggling to pay their heating bills, they’re receiving heating assistance, that kind of thing,” said Jessica Williams, the executive director of WindowDressers. “And in the time I’ve been with WindowDressers, the number of the percent of inserts that we’ve been providing that go to low-income families through our special rate program has increased from 25% to nearly 40%. That number has been going up every year. But there are some communities that struggle to reach those folks.”
Some states also have programs that can be tapped to pay for them. Efficiency Vermont, for example, an energy efficiency utility first launched in 1999, offers rebate programs that can lower the cost of the inserts. And the local build groups can also use their fundraising to cut down the cost for people they know could use the help. That conversation often begins with the measurers and the measurements. They may already know someone is struggling, or take a guess while they are there. Or it may be when they determine the rough price point and financial reality strikes. They would save money in the long run, but the upfront cost would overwhelm the monthly budget. Sometimes there’s a way around that hurdle.
Once taken, the measurements are sent up to Maine through an electronic program the headquarters in Maine operates. It will also determine precisely how much material will be needed and what the cost will be.
The orders go to the production facility in Searsmont, Maine, where the frames are cut and holes pre-drilled so that when they reach the build site, everything is ready to go. One full-time production manager is joined by a small group of seasonal workers at the production facility to help fill the orders. The materials usually aren’t delivered directly to each build. Instead, they are gathered into groups and shipped to a few locations in New Hampshire and Vermont, and someone from each group goes and gets their share to bring back to the local build site. In Maine, the building kits are usually picked up by members of the build group themselves. These usually occur in the fall, giving time for orders to be taken and processed over the spring and summer.
Then it’s over to the community volunteers and customers, and a five or six day build period where the orders are produced and turned into WindowDressers inserts. When possible, the builds try to make the inserts that customers have ordered on the same day those customers are there helping out, so they can go home with them and install them right away, if they want to.
Up through 2024, more than 78,600 inserts have been measured, built and installed. That has saved nearly 4 million gallons of heating fuel, and prevented more than 44,000 tons of carbon dioxide from entering the global atmosphere, according to WindowDressers records. The numbers for 2025 will be added to those.
So what’s stopping this win-win-win idea from spreading out beyond three northern New England states synonymous with Yankee thriftiness and ingenuity? A pilot program is in the works to expand into nearby Massachusetts, Jessica Williams said. WindowDressers has identified four to five communities in the northwest portion
of the state for the pilot project. But they don’t want to overreach too quickly, she added.
Ensuring production capacity is one hurdle to be navigated, she said.
“Because the production is so centralized, potentially we would need another production facility or storage facilities,” she said. “I think the volume would have to be pretty significant for us to do that, but it’s something we’re thinking about.”
They have received interest from some communities already, she said. A few locations in Connecticut and upstate New York have indicated they might be ready. There’s also been some interest from places in the Midwest, and even Hawaii, plus another one recently from Nova Scotia.
“We have people in Los Angeles and Texas more interested in keeping the cool air in rather than the heat in,” Jessica Williams said. “So it’s a little bit of an opposite need, but the same benefit.”
And it’s an organization that is primarily an army of volunteers, with a small production staff, so it’s one step at a time, she added.
“We rely on volunteers,” Donald de Voil said. “In some ways it’s a very fragile model in that way, because from year to year, we don’t know how many of our volunteer teams are going to return.”
It’s also a lot of work, lead organizers of the builds will say. Getting the word out, getting the orders, setting realistic goals, fundraising, finding spots for builds, training, covering expenses while also trying to serve a low-income community doesn’t happen by itself. It can be exhausting, but also enormously rewarding, said Jim Hand, another volunteer with the Bennington County group in Vermont.
“It sounds like hard work, but it’s quite easy work, it’s more like the house-raising thing of years ago,” he said. “And you get to talk and meet new people and there’s always food, so it’s sort of a gathering more than a work assignment.”
In short, neighbors helping neighbors.
Now a freelance journalist based in Vermont, Andrew McKeever was a reporter for the Bennington Banner and Rutland Herald, and then the managing editor for the Manchester Journal, three newspapers in Vermont. He then went on to be the news director at GNAT-TV, a community media access center based in Manchester, Vermont.
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