I have been watching a few building You Tube videos lately and have seen several extensions being built where the brickwork is dutifully cavity insulated only for a massive opening left on one wall for Bi-fold doors to be fitted and the trend seems to be to make these ever larger. Are these rooms going to be hard to keep warm? New housing tends to have small windows in comparison to 60/70’s housing (picture windows sold as giving a wonderful view but really a cost saving on brickwork). I thought the move to small windows was to make them more energy efficient?
From my own experience despite double glazing heat loss can be considerable where there is large windows. The previous owners of our bungalow added a conservatory onto a bedroom and combined the two into a single room with no doorway between them. When we first moved in it was quite noticeable how the conservatory room cooled a lot more rapid than the rest of the house. We had the double glazed roof removed and an insulated roof to replace it and this had a marked effect on heat retention but still this room tends to cool more rapidly and only remains warm because we can control the heat literally room by room.
My daughter has a new build that in most rooms has small windows except the kitchen/diner which is a DG french window 4 panels not the whole wall and she found it cool when working from home.
With the high energy prices are all these projects a nice little earner in the offing with builders recalled in the future to brick up some of these openings?
Richard