Removal and reuse - uPVC windows, shower tray etc.

[David WE Roberts]

Couple of things I'vew been contemplating:

(1) I've recently (last couple of years) fitted a new shower tray (ceramic) but the shower cubicle goes in the refurbishment. Is it worth cleaning the tray up to pass on? Or is recycling not time effective?

(2) We are going to take out 5 uPVC windows and a door plus an aluminium patio door. I think that these usually just go into the skip but this seems a waste. I am vaguely tempted by the notion of building some kind of greenhouse out of the bits but this may be a lot of work. Mainly, though, I am wondering how easy it is to get windows and doors out without destroying them. Installing, you fit the frames then the glazing. You can have the glazing replaced. So logically you should be able to take out the glazing then take out the frames (reverse of installation) and re-use them. However I don't know how time consuming this would be, and time is money on a building project.

Anyone attempted this or similar?

Cheers

Dave R

[Owain]

You might use it in the garden as a planter, it wouldn't need to be pristine for that.

Much better to use them for a shed. If you don't want to, quite likely someone else will if you freegle them.

You can probably take them out whole if you've got enough people to take the extra weight with the glass in.

Owain

[Martin Bonner]

When we did our bathroom, I Freecycled almost all the old kit (bath, sink, loo, shower surround, shower tray)

[Lobster]

Your best bet is to look on Ebay for "Completed Listings" for comparable items, in both cases - that will give you an idea of what they might fetch and whether it's worth spending the time extracting them intact and then cleaning them up. Gut feeling says 'no'.

Regarding the windows, consider also that many of these are made to measure for the opening (even if the opening is allegedly standard), which means effectively you may have 5 non-standard sized windows... even less likely to be of value to anybody.

David

[SteveW]

When I bought my house, only one window was still wooden (and rotting), I picked up a salesman's uPVC "demonstrator" with a handle screwed to the side from a car boot sale. The height was short, but an extra row of bricks solved that.

All the uPVC and glass, plus the door and most of the roof are second hand for our conservatory.

People building a shed or garage may well not care about sizes, as they can work around them.

SteveW

[Phil L]

They can be planed all around by about 5mm if they are slightly too large, and you can get upvc knock-ons to make them wider and/or taller by about

40mm all the way around if they are too small

[Andrew Gabriel]

If they have frame fixings, you'll need to remove the fixed glass units to be able to unscrew the frame fixings.

If they have security tape, you'll need new security tape to fix them back in (after cleaning the old stuff off). Look to see how thick the foam tape is before you disturb it, so you can buy the correct thickness (comes in 1mm multiples from 1mm up to around 6mm, and also black or white foam).

Beware any toughened sealed units are extremely fragile on their edges and corners after removing from the frame. A slight brush against anything hard (like a bit of masonary) can cause the toughened glass to shatter. Don't stand them on a hard surface such as a concrete path, or lean them directly on a brick wall.

[jgharston]

I'm redoing the tenant's bathroom, and put the bath on eBay. In the meantime some scrote has knicked the taps off it.

JGH

[Andrew Gabriel]

Plumber was replacing my brother's bath. Took the feet off, so he could slide the old one down the stairs. Dragged it out and propped it up on the pavement against the railings. Went back inside and upstairs to fetch the feet, and brought them down. Bath has vanished. We left the feet outside on the pavement for a couple of days, but they didn't come back for them.

[John Williamson]

Someone nearby is probably wondering why their new bath wobbles...

[David WE Roberts]

Just to note that I was not proposing to sell or recycle the windows - I was proposing to use them to build a greenhouse of sorts. This would probably involve bits of reused wood to link them together and fill in the inevitable gaps where there isn't any window/door. I was asking if anyone had used old windows/doors to build a greenhouse.

Cheers

Dave R

[David WE Roberts]

Beat me to it - I was going to ask how you got the window out withour removing the glass :-)

Thanks for the warning about the toughened glass.

[SteveW]

You can cut through the fittings between the frame and the brickwork, but you still have to take the glass out to re-fit them, so there's little point.

The door to my conservatory didn't have toughened glass, it had laminated; two sheets of glass sandwiching a plastic layer; two of these sandwiches to form a sealed unit - God that thing's heavy!

SteveW

[SteveW]

You can get square plastic section for the corners and screw directly together along the sides - neat and nothing to paint or rot.

Plastic in-fill panels will need no maintenance or look out for a suitably sized, second-hand door or window on Ebay.

No, but my conservatory was second-hand and I re-arranged the frames, filled in a corner with brickwork and added a flat roofed section to stand the whole thing off from the house to make a larger and different shaped conservatory.

SteveW