Double Glazing or not?

[KieranJW]

There's a lot of good points in this thread, but what about saleability?

We all have to sell up one day, or our heirs/executors do, or worse the local authority of you are intestate and have care bills.

When you sell, it's reasonable to assume that the buyer, valuer and surveyor they engage won't have the nuanced understanding like the people commenting here, they will just tick a box that says "DG - no" and advise buyer to negotiate the price down or look elsewhere.

At almost 70 I am realistic : I will be selling up my slightly too large and awkward house in about 10 years time *. Any work I do now has that in mind, conventional, good quality, easy care and saleable. (I'm not cynical, I'm not saying do it cheap but make it last 12 years si it's someone else's problem). Were I 35 and content to live where I do for a long time I might take different decisions.

So the DG or not question has a non technical, aesthetic, human, dimension. Only you can answer that bit.

* keep an eye on market place for lathe, Bandsaw and pillar drill sometime around 2030.

Wise words thanks. I am 37 and we are looking at extending as we have four children in a 3 bed house. I dont particularly like the style of house but the location is spot on for how we live. The ideal would be to build a heavy timber framed autonomous house but my wife has zero interest or inclination so the only other reason to move would be a small holding or somewhere with outbuildings for a workshop but unfortunately they seem to have gone beyond our budget in the last five or so years. So based on this I want to do the best i can with what i have so as Jacob keeps saying the correct design and finish.

Thanks to you and all others this has given me a lot to think about.

 

[KieranJW]

Around me two very nice streets (the two nicest in the town, one of which I lived on) were considered years ago for making into conservation areas. There was a mad rush to install uPVC before it happened (ultimately it didn't, they realised too many properties had already been changed). Most of the Victorian box frame windows had already been replaced by post WW2 joinery that was crepe anyway, and of the hundreds of people I spoke to over twenty+ years no one was remotely interested in originality, they were interested only in the practicalities.

Yes unfortunately that is like a majority around my way. Astro turf, block paving plastic fascia, plastic cladding, plastic doors, plastic gates, plastic porches, dry verge and now plastic home offices/bars/hottub shelters.
Although low maintenance it seems to suck the soul out of places and then they have to replace it as it starts looking shabby.

I appreciate what they are saying but I'd rather grass on my lawn that isn't perfect but is so much more life affirming.

 

[KieranJW]

Do you think that is still as-true today? Although the vast majority of people have busy lives especially trying to raise a family with modern burnt out jobs and long commutes. But there has been a huge rise in house prices over the years and a broadening of interest in property. Around us - I'm thinking Harrogate not so much Ripon the period theme seems to be the big sell. Probably still a minority, but quite a big and well healed one.

Yes I have some customers who have the period property but didnt realise the slight adjustments that come with the quirks of a characterful house and probably in hindsight wouldn't do it again (although they stay invested) others absolutely love it and the quirks and then go about finding out more and love the attachment this gives them.

One lady had duelling stairs in their farm house and had found out where they had originally come from before they had ended up in there home and could tell me all the different additions and when.

 

[Doug71]

Have them do what's called a furniture stamp it's tiny and sits under the sightline.

My usual glass supplier won't do DG units with a furniture stamp on anymore, I guess it's to do with building regs and being able to see the stamp to prove it's toughened

They will still supply single glazing with a furniture stamp on though, can't really see the logic of it.

 

[John Brown]

Yes unfortunately that is like a majority around my way. Astro turf, block paving plastic fascia, plastic cladding, plastic doors, plastic gates, plastic porches, dry verge and now plastic home offices/bars/hottub shelters.
Although low maintenance it seems to suck the soul out of places and then they have to replace it as it starts looking shabby.

I appreciate what they are saying but I'd rather grass on my lawn that isn't perfect but is so much more life affirming.

And plastic picket fences come next. Already a major feature of American life.
Personally, I hate it all, but I can understand why people get sucked into plastic DG units.
We have oak frames with DG, they're not perfect, but look great (to us). Our previous house had rotting timber framed SG box sash. I would've slowly remade them all, and incorporated DG, but as I understand it, I'm not allowed to without FENSA certification. The cost if paying someone else to do it would have been sky high.

 

[Phil Pascoe]

A friend years ago was taken to court for fitting uPVC windows in a conservation area. He was told they should have been oak frames. He said he'd been a professional decorator for thirty years and had never come across an oak framed window - they insisted he was wrong. I'm 67, I've never seen an oak framed window. They don't exist here.

 

[KieranJW]

Yes, but it's quite labour intensive - few people want to do the job themselves. I've repaired badly damaged box frame windows that I could have made from scratch quicker. Builders and chippies around here work for £200 a day only if they're really desperate.

Yes I

And plastic picket fences come next. Already a major feature of American life.
Personally, I hate it all, but I can understand why people get sucked into plastic DG units.
We have oak frames with DG, they're not perfect, but look great (to us). Our previous house had rotting timber framed SG box sash. I would've slowly remade them all, and incorporated DG, but as I understand it, I'm not allowed to without FENSA certification. The cost if paying someone else to do it would have been sky high.

We manufacture or fit others windows and repair but are not fensa registered as I am a sole trader sometimes working as a pair with another carpenter and joiner.

I have an nvq level 3 in carpentry and joinery and an nvq level 3 in heritage carpentry and joinery.

As far as I'm aware the fensa certification is only a way of indicating that you have windows that comply with the building regs.

None of my previous employers were fensa registered either.

 

[John Brown]

A friend years ago was taken to court for fitting uPVC windows in a conservation area. He was told they should have been oak frames. He said he'd been a professional decorator for thirty years and had never come across an oak framed window - they insisted he was wrong. I'm 67, I've never seen an oak framed window. They don't exist here.

I have no idea what your point is.
I'm 68, and I have oak framed windows.

 

[Phil Pascoe]

Good for you. I've never seen one. Just because something might be common in one area doesn't mean they are common or necessarily desirable in another.

 

[Phil Pascoe]

We manufacture or fit others windows and repair but are not fensa registered

You get them inspected every time I assume?

 

[KieranJW]

You get them inspected every time I assume?

If they are done as part of a conversion which is under building regs then yes. If it is a conservation repair then we replace like for like which according to the conservation officer is fine.
If we anticipate any issues we run it past them and it is normally us who find a solution and then put it forward for their approval.

 

[baldkev]

As far as I'm aware the fensa certification is only a way of indicating that you have windows that comply with the building regs.

And fitting is as per regs..... im a chippy, fitted loads of windows for a company i used to work for and a fair few on my own jobs. A couple of years back i was talking to a building control officer. He asked where i was working next ( it was a completion visit )
I told him about the next job and that it included a velux. He said he hadnt seen an application and got very insistant on knowing more about the job as building control have to issue a permit to replace a window if you are not registered with fensa. Failure to do so will usually throw up problems with solicitors during house sales and when you do the work, the building control officer may drop in to see it is correctly fitted ( with cavity closers etc where necessary )

Its best to notify them etc, as it's not worth the hassle of the repercussions

 

[Ollie78]

Thanks Ollie,
I too have used the polymer putty replacements too and quite like them especially if customer is using a standard paint.

I do know of a job where slim units were used and the supplier provided sovereigns silacryl to bed the units in and they failed. I have used silacryl as an acrylic caulk substitute or as a sealant but never as a bed.

I did wonder if bedding units with the putty replacements would help if the double glazed unit seals fail as you would effectively have a secondary seal.
I like this as I think it looks better than beads on more traditional windows.

There is a lot of food for thought.

Worked for a firm who used the Sylacryl backing and linseed oil for face putty, absolute rubbish way to do it in my experience. Sylacril takes ages to dry as does putty, the only advantage was the putty is easier to do neatly if you dust it off properly.

Repair care Dryseal is good but silly money, Hodgesons heritage is a bit cheaper, I use mostly Timbaglaze from chemfix. I know a place that use Stixall which is only a fiver a tube. I did a test with it and it works pretty well, I guess they are all pretty similar chemically. I find them good if you need to spray finish top coat after glazing ( which I try to avoid).

Fensa is not concerned with repair or restoration work.

There is certainly not enough building inspectors to physically inspect every window that gets installed.
I think its a bit like electrical work, technically you are not even supposed to change a socket or light switch but there is a bit about being a "competent person" somewhere in there, which means you can do it as long as you aren`t a total halfwit.

Ollie

 

[sometimewoodworker]

Exactly (I agree totally with you - acoustic glass mentioned in a previous post by me) , I was told that this make up would work by the salesman but later discovered that it isn't especially effective from a sound insulation perspective. Acoustic glass would have been the right way to go but the glass thicknesses would need to have been tuned to the noise that I would like to have eliminated. I have seen websites which provide examples of thicknesses to tune out, for example, road or train or aircraft noise. Generally what works for one, doesn't necessarily work well for another.

While I don’t know about special glass like acoustic that you mention and salesmen are alway talking at BS O’Clock. There is no real need to bother with sound tuning. If you are able to get each pane a different thickness, simple physics tells you that sound that passes through one thickness easily does not pass through a different thickness as easily. So 3 different thickness gives the best reduction. The only point is how thin can you go for the centre pane in the manufacturing process without paying silly money. Laminate C4+1.52+LowEC4+Ars8+C5 got us the 24db reduction while avoiding the need for security bars.

EDIT, it turns out that laminated glass and acoustic glass are synonymous however instead of the single PVB layer we have 5 as that makes them reasonably thief resistant, they certainly work for sound reduction as I show in my video.

 

[Jacob]

While I don’t know about special glass like acoustic that you mention and salesmen are alway talking at BS O’Clock. There is no real need to bother with sound tuning. If you are able to get each pane a different thickness, simple physics tells you that sound that passes through one thickness easily does not pass through a different thickness as easily. So 3 different thickness gives the best reduction. The only point is how thin can you go for the centre pane in the manufacturing process without paying silly money. Laminate C4+1.52+LowEC4+Ars8+C5 got us the 24db reduction while avoiding the need for security bars.

Apparently it's not about thickness per se it's about resonant frequencies - what sets one pane off resonating must be out of tune with the other so that it doesn't harmonise and pick up the same frequencies.

 

[sometimewoodworker]

Apparently it's not about thickness per se it's about resonant frequencies - what sets one pane off resonating must be out of tune with the other so that it doesn't harmonise and pick up the same frequencies.

Thank you for restating my point in a different way.

 

[heimlaga]

That is the type of windows we have. The house was built in the 1890s. The windows are made of pine or similar soft wood and I have no reason to believe any of them have ever been replaced.

Have you any knowledge of upgrading these windows? I have toyed with the idea of making replacement (outer?) casements to house 2 glass panes instead of 1, but have not tried it.

The only upgrades that pays off economically when counting in time materials and energy costs are to install modern rubber seals on the inner casement. As inner casements were sealed with some sort of tape on the inside there were often no proper rebates for the inner casements. Proper rebates for inner casements became common around 1900 in Finland. The best way to create such a rebate to allow for properly complessed modern rubber seals is to nail a batten inside the jamb so a rebate is formed.
If you still want to upgrade I have seen a third casement added halfways between the inner and the outer. I have also seen new inner casements with two glass panes but they were terribly clumsy and a bit on the heavy side for the hinges.

I have seen new outer casements with two panes but they were utter failiours. As they open outwards and are opened for ventilation an outer casement with double panes must be extremely heavily built with very solid hardware to not fall apart when held open. Both wind at weight acts on them at once. They likely didn't insulate much as the space between outer and inner casement must be ventilated by gaps to the outside to avoid condensation. Everything went wrong in short....... and the thick materials looked totally out of proportion.

 

[ian33a]

While I don’t know about special glass like acoustic that you mention and salesmen are alway talking at BS O’Clock. There is no real need to bother with sound tuning. If you are able to get each pane a different thickness, simple physics tells you that sound that passes through one thickness easily does not pass through a different thickness as easily. So 3 different thickness gives the best reduction. The only point is how thin can you go for the centre pane in the manufacturing process without paying silly money. Laminate C4+1.52+LowEC4+Ars8+C5 got us the 24db reduction while avoiding the need for security bars.

As a rule of thumb, yes, different thicknesses and gaps, in combination, provide attenuation and so suppress sound transmission. It isn't, however, a one size fits all. Different locations suffer from different sources of noise. Noise is simply a range of transmitted frequencies which we find irritating. The most irritating frequencies associated with road traffic will be different to those of a passenger train or a freight train or an aircraft. This is where the tuning aspect may become important. There are loads of tuning calculators available from glass manufacturers and mathematicians which can be used to develop a glazing unit stack up which attempts to suppress general noise and which focus upon key spectral areas and, thus, tunes the unit to address certain noise problems.

 

[Phil Pascoe]

I think its a bit like electrical work, technically you are not even supposed to change a socket or light switch but there is a bit about being a "competent person" somewhere in there, which means you can do it as long as you aren`t a total halfwit.
Ollie

I believe from what I've read that you are actually tested before being considered competent, although someone may prove me wrong.

 

[GregW]

The experienced fitter who put in my windows said if you buy triple glazing in this Country you've been conned. The frames will be for 28mm panels and therefore the gaps will be too small.

28mm triple ? Well, it is ridicules.
Casements min 64mm, and min 32mm triple glaze.

Like I said, HGV going next too it