The Irongate area, off Hannegan Road on Bellingham's northeast side, is best known for its business park — but tucked around it are established residential streets and small acreages whose homes date mostly from the 1970s through the 1990s. Those decades produced sturdy houses with unremarkable windows, and thirty-plus years of Whatcom County weather have finished the argument. Alpine Exteriors replaces aging windows across the Irongate area with units that fit both the homes and the exposure.
Northeast Bellingham's Exposure Problem
Irongate sits on the wrong side of town for winter comfort: when arctic air spills out of the Fraser Valley, the northeast neighborhoods feel it first and hardest. Homes here take multi-day stretches of freezing wind that inland Washington would call a cold snap and Whatcom County calls a northeaster. Windows from the 1970s and 1980s — aluminum sliders, early double-pane units with dead seals, hollow bargain-era vinyl — leak that cold straight into living spaces and drive heating costs up with it.
Summer flips the problem. Open exposure toward the Mount Baker Highway corridor means long hours of sun on south and west walls, and clear old glass turns those rooms into greenhouses by August.