As we have come to expect from English Heritage, the article ‘Meet the building regs: Yes we can’ (Bullseye, issue 12) smuggled in a lot of prejudice and opinion as fact. It was like stepping back in time.

I’ll leave the BFRC, systems companies and dedicated sliding sash companies like Masterframe to put English Heritage right on its technical inaccuracies. But the idea that heavy curtains and ugly, space-hogging secondary glazing will improve energy saving enough to match double glazing and achieve a C-rating seems highly improbable. If you have to keep the original windows then yes, you’ll have to use every trick in the book including secondary glazing, roller blinds, heavy curtains and extra seals to paper over the cracks and gaps and cut down on draughts.

And on a good day, maybe you can reduce the whistling of the wind and cut down on heat leakage. But it isn’t much fun living in artificial light behind a barricade of secondary glazing, roller blinds and heavy curtains. It says that a combination of these methods will upgrade most sash windows to meet building regulations. Would that be the equivalent of an A, B or C window energy rating, or is it a G?

I fully support the idea of protecting our heritage and I think wood is great for floors and stairs and furniture. But in British weather it’s not an ideal material for window frames.

Georgian sashes lasted a long time because the timber was seasoned, and they were well made. But, Georgian houses also set the windows back in a rebate so they were protected from the weather. And labour was cheap and plentiful, so they could afford to repaint and repair at frequent intervals.

If not well maintained and protected against the weather, timber rots and degrades quickly, particularly in coastal regions. That’s a fact. The RCG Blog has an excellent set of photographs to remind us, showing what happens to windows that haven’t been maintained. I recommend everyone to visit the site and see what weather does to wood. The same RCG photographs are on the Fighting Back with Facts website.

Many home owners have not experienced life with timber windows. In most very new houses with double glazed timber windows the frames are now built to a higher spec and they will last – provided you maintain them. But anyone who lived in a house with timber windows built between 1980 and 2000 knows that timber doesn’t last. Many failed catastrophically in five to seven years. Yes, you do get badly installed PVC-U windows, and ones with cheap hardware and poor designs to meet a price, but in general PVC-U windows look good and last many years.

Georgian builders used the most modern materials and products that were available at the time. Had modern PVC-U windows been available they would have used them.

Mr Nicholas comments that unlike PVC-U, timber windows ‘can be repaired easily and be made to look brand new again with just a simple coat of paint’. Given their vulnerability to the weather, they have to, although I think he is forgetting the filler, the primer and undercoat and the second coat of gloss if you want them to last. Maintaining timber windows beyond the first few years is a labour of love.

Mr Nicholas refers to energy saving measures as a ‘fad’. I disagree. Surely it pays to avoid waste, in energy as in other things? Saving the energy lost through windows has a far greater impact than switching to energy saving light bulbs and other token gestures. And the idea of renewable energy is not to get us off the hook so we can squander it.

English Heritage does much good, but heavy curtains are not the answer. If they were, would the rest of the world have invested so much money and effort in seeking ways to save expensive energy?

Yours sincerely
Martin Randall
Chairman, Crystal Direct and Founder of Fighting Back With Facts

Thanks Dean Hunt, Barry Dunlop and Renegade PR Guy for keeping things ticking along. I had specifically requested that Dean should net be involved with the website in my absence – mainly because he’s far funnier and creative than I am. Who else would have thought of putting a popcorn-eating hamster balancing upside down on a piano, onto a website about conservatories and double glazing??

Renegade PR Guy’s post did get me thinking about whether uPVC windows and doors were a suitable choice for the Lake District – England’s largest National Park. I’m confident that Chris Wood from English Heritage will have his views on the subject, but I couldn’t help snapping away at some of the buildings in the area.

And, I came up with 10 reasons why I feel wood windows and doors are not always the best option, and uPVC should be considered a valid alternative, assuming they are of a good quality and sympathetically designed.

Reason 1

Reason 2

Reason 3

Reason 4

Reason 5

Reason 6

Reason 7

Reason 8

Reason 9

Reason 10

With all the negative publicity uPVC seems to have been getting recently, I think we need to remember uPVC is still by far the most popular option for the majority of homeowners in the UK. It is a cost effective and long lasting alternative to timber, without the need for continuous maintenance.

And in the Lake District, an area of outstanding beauty, I witnessed many examples of well designed uPVC windows and doors having been specified to some of the most beautiful buildings.

I can feel the power coursing through my narrowed arteries as I contemplate the freedom bestowed upon me as a member of a select band of people to whom Renegade Conservatory Guy has handed the keys, as it were, to his blog. That he has done so must seriously call into question his state of mind and I would urge those nearest to him to consider the laws that ensure those with unbalanced faculties to be safely put out of harm’s way until such time as they can be suitably quelled. The alternative view of course is that the merry band of which I am a select member has been appointed because he trusts us implicitly to guard and sustain his precious baby, that we will do our best to bring an alternative stimulus to RCG in his absence.

Personally I just think he’s plain bonkers.

Nonetheless, whilst I have this tremendous if misplaced opportunity, I will use it to exorcise a rant fashioned last week whilst visiting a beautiful Cornish fishing village, the name of which is irrelevant for the purpose of this column. I am a thorough proponent of PVC-U as a framing material and as such I find myself irritated by the sweeping statements by which this thoroughly honest, hard working material is condemned. But In the eyes of a number of small but disproportionately vocal groups it is the invention of the Devil himself, an artefact designed to bring humanity to its knees and sweep us all to Hades and eternal damnation.

Most recently the appropriately monikered Chris Wood, head of building conservation and research at English Heritage, restated his views that PVC-U is not an appropriate material for use in conservation-zoned buildings, a comment that was rebuffed by the Glass and Glazing Federation by the supremely sensible riposte that it was the design of the window that was the key issue, not the material. This is a view with which I thoroughly agree and support.

Check out this Photo — Provided it is a well designed window — can you tell the difference between PVC-U and Timber?

Mr Woods comments came jarringly into mind during a stroll last week through the delightfully uneven and winding Cornish street. A single property was installed throughout with conventional, side-hung sash frames and what looked menacingly like a composite front door. The windows were, of course, quite obviously manufactured in PVC-U. They, and the door, were quite horrible and my wife’s immediate reaction was ‘How on earth did they get away with fitting those horrible PVC windows in a street like this?’.

I pondered if her outburst, were it to have come at all, would have been different had the frames been thoughtfully designed vertical sliders? Would she have glanced at the windows and made any reference at all to the fact that they were PVC-U and not timber, had the design been appropriate?

Apparently the area is now covered by a conservation order and the windows were replaced prior to this, thus allowing complete freedom to cock up not just the building but also the street itself. That the door was possibly composite is neither here nor there, but a dismal and inappropriate design is also representative of the owner’s lack of care for his property.

And thereby hangs, I believe, a subjective if timely example of the point made by the GGF: that sensitive and appropriate design is the key issue when replacing windows in any property, not the material from which they are made. There are some superb vertical sliders being made out there that offer good looks whilst bringing all the performance benefits to the occupants, in addition of course to windows that open and close perfectly.

I doubt however that even these would be acceptable to Mr Wood, who not only insists upon timber frames, but also that float glass be banned in favour of rolled. Surely some compromises must be made as the realities of global warming become ever more evident? But thoughtless compromises in the design of PVC-U windows have contributed much to the general resistance to the material now put up by so many people and places.

Who is going to take the lead now to overcome such prejudice?

Ian Chisholm from the GGF’s response to the BBC article ‘A plague of Plastic Windows’:

English Heritage carries out some wonderful work in protecting our historical built environment. But now and again the organisation’s rather extremist, sweeping diktats expose a very narrow point of view.

The Glass and Glazing Federation represents the whole of the UK glass and glazing industry and has no preference for any particular Fenestration material. Our stance is that what must be central in choosing new windows for any installation is that the design is appropriate to the specific property into which it is being installed, as well as adjacent properties and the surrounding area. With that established, there are some fine windows produced in PVC-U, just as there are poor windows manufactured using timber. To sweep aside any material without considering all of the options is inappropriate.

We cannot believe that having timber windows that look tatty, are poorly maintained and offer inadequate protection against the elements (and which are therefore inevitably energy inefficient), rather than well designed frames in PVC-U, performing to the highest standards of energy efficiency and comfort, makes any sense.

Whatever choice one makes, choose well designed and manufactured windows, in appropriate style for the property being installed as well as the surrounding area, in finishes that are again appropriate (for example, choose a cream coloured PVC-U window, rather than high white); and of course, from a reputable manufacturer and installer such as a GGF member.

Ian Chisholm
Glass and Glazing Federation

You can read the article here:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/8114881.stm

The fact is that if I drove around the streets of Wakefield, I’m pretty sure I could take a few pictures of poor quality timber windows.

The article is so badly biassed it’s untrue. Apparently, our industry has been ’sneeringly’ referring to plastic windows by the term ‘uPVC’. There’s little mention of how great uPVC sash windows look, and I’m sure Alan Burgess would have a different take on the debate.

There is a comments section at the bottom of the page (which now seems closed), and it was nice to see John Cowie balancing up the debate with others supporting the benefits of uPVC.