Misting DG window and drilling glass: a result!

Todays BBC1 Homes Under the Hammer (repeat of a 2011 prog) showed a house in Gainsborough where the bathroom window had four inches of water inside the 'sealed' DG unit. Can't understand how it didn't freeze up and break the glass.

Now you have the hole, wouldn't it be just as easy to squirt some desiccant in there and seal it back up, or am I missing something?

er well.... there's the reason why it steamed up in the first place that's still unresolved...

NB what dessicant were you considering "squirting" in there?

Jim K

Not much point in having double glazing if air is free to circulate between the two?

absolute tosh

Conc H2SO4?

Might do the spacer bars though...

Because as it froze, it had room to expand.

mmm "explosive gas filled" DG units anyone? ;>)))

Jim K

What sort of drill bit & diameter did you use in the end?

Bob

That's OK - the H2 would displace the air through the OP's vent hole and the H2 would no longer be explosive :)

So no point in using argon, etc, either?

Ah but wouldn't the DG units be *less* efficient as a result? ;>)

Jim K

Like this

From my earlier post:

It's not that difficult to get silica gel granules down a rubber tube. Depends on the size of the hole though, obviously :)

worse than a vaccuum innit? ;-)

what matters is not absolute seal, but how much movement there is, and the important movement is not in and out of the DG unit, but the circulation inside it, and one tiny hole makes piss all difference to that.

As long as you don't have small holes in both panes. If you do, then a strong cold wind directly onto the window will slowly force cold air into the house.

/It's not that difficult to get silica gel granules down a rubber tube. Depends on the size of the hole though, obviously :) /q

And I'd expect how inventive you can be at spreading them out so as not to look completely like a (small) pile of entrapped spider s*it.... ;^)

Jim K

Do you have any figures as to how much air can be forced, by wind pressure alone, through a pair of, say, 3mm holes, especially if not aligned across the two panes?

Do you have any figures for how much air can be forced, by wind pressure alone, through the seals round the glass, between inner and outer frames, round hinges, between wall and frame, etc., in a fairly ordinary house?

Anticipating your answer, I'll say "Me neither", but I'd be surprised if the glass holes allowed anything like as much as the rest of the window/frame/wall.

It's not going to matter too much if they're aligned or not. Wind pressure will force air into the gap between the panes, which will then be forced out into the room.

Really? When we moved here, there'd fairly recently been extension work. All the new windows were wooden double-glazed, so we thought, that's OK. Wrong. They were all extremely poorly sealed, and cold air came round the edges of all of them (the DG units themselves were OK).

So we had the whole lot replaced within six months. Result? One or two rooms are still getting cold [1] and I'm taking steps to fix that. But in the main, as the new windows have rubber seals and do not leak air, it's a major improvement.