Hi all, looking to put new windows in a new build that is in a recently designated conser vation area. Local conservation officer has stated that he is looking for timber windows. Given the sash style upvc ones that are available can he insist on this as I am looking for low maintenance. I doubt if anyone would be able to tell the difference unless they got close up. Annoying factor is that only one of the neighbouring six houses has the original timber windows. 4 are upvc and one is aluminium.
If you have the vaguest interest in buildings at all then plastic windows can be spotted from half a mile! They may be low (no) maintenance but they are also highly obsolescent and will need replacing in from 5 to max 20 years. Lots of studies show that trad joinery is cheaper and lower maintenance than plastic, in the longer term. Higher initial cost but lower cost overall over time. Also adds to house value: estate agents "retaining original features" means higher value. Plastic windows are also an environmental disaster - not only spoiling the built environment but also using oil reserves and creating a waste disposal problem due to being unrecycleable and short life. The more conservation areas the better for all of us!
The planners can make it a condition if they wish. You then have the right of appeal to an independent inspector. Mind you that will probably be rejected.
'retaining original features' is generally regarded as estate agent speak for 'in need of modernisation'.
The vast majority of people viewing a house on seeing wooden windows would adjust their offer to compensate for the fact that they would be replacing all the windows.
What a total pile of opinionated crap. Do you design for "Changing rooms" in your spare time?
PVC windows have a life in excess of at least 30 years in the British climate and designs can be far superior to wood. In all probability they will last for well over a century. Maintenance is normally only a case of replacing the sealing rubber when it shrinks. Wooden windows are yesterdays technology and far more expensive when total cost through the life cycle is considered. IME they all warp, rot, become draughty and generally are a typical British unreliable high maintenance product. Having seen the wooden product in the USA with exactly the same problems, there's no way I'd go back to high maintenance wooden windows. I think they come under the same category as Aga's, trendy at the moment, but functionally obsolete. The pvc is recyclable, the US does it. Anyway, why would you want to recycle something which is perfectly functional? Whenever I see a house without pvc windows, I immediately knock £20K off the asking price to allow for replacement windows. Conservation areas?, the Americans have a much better system, they tear it down after 40 years and rebuild it with todays fittings and technology. Not many real people want to live in museums, hence the demand for new houses, sadly built with cheap and nasty wooden windows to reduce the developers initial costs, so the buyers have to replace them with pvc
To drag this off on a tangent (or allow it to fly free).
If your carpenter and installers are living in a modern society, then they are also using oil to get to work every day, to grow their food, ...
You can't simply say "wood and lime good, cement and UPVC bad".
Yes, wood and lime may use less energy to produce than UPVC and cement. But if they take more people to install, and those people use more resources when installing them, it's a net loss.
Per capita UK emissions of CO2 are about 2500Kg.
I'd really like to see some numbers broken down accurately by building type.
However. Use cement, and build rigidly, and you've pretty much got to build on a rigid structure, meaning hugely extensive foundations.
Use lime, and allow the building to flex, and you can reduce these.
The 'right' way to solve this I suspect is prizes.
Set goals, which might be CO2 emission, operating cost, price, ... for a house.
Scrap _all_ building/fire/planning regulations for these, and instead rely on a detailed engineering survey to ensure they meet the spirit of the regs. Rewrite the regs if required.
Award a prize for the 'best' house of several million.
The energy regs change in April. A quick and dirty summary of the requirement is: work out the CO2 emissions for a house of your proposed size built to the 2002 regs. The estimated CO2 emissions from your house have to be 20% less than this. How you achieve this is up to you - more insulation, better windows, condensing boiler, solar panel are all options
One of the changes is to allow manufacturer's certified figures for windows: the very best windows now have a negative energy figure - the solar energy they let in exceeds the heat that leaks out.
Our solar panel was connected last Sunday and it's working!
I think our windows must be like that even though we have a lot of glass. At night, when they could leak heat perhaps, the curtains are drawn in heated rooms.
The only thing full of holes is the argument that the defendant put put up. The bottom line is she will end up in prison with a far bigger bill than if she had the sense to obey the law.
The daft prat could have got a joiner in to ease the door at a fraction of the cost of a replacement, and it would then keep going indefinitely just given a bit of normal maintenance.
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