St Helens Glass

[philster]

Would anyone recommend St Helens Glass

[The3rd Earl Of Derby]

I suppose they would.

-- Sir Benjamin Middlethwaite

[Colin Wilson]

Not entirely sure - we had the whole house done 10 years ago by them (bear in mind they`ve since changed ownership) - IIRC its the owner of a football club who now owns them, and possibly Everest (?) Windows.

No units have "blown", but ours are externally beaded, at least two of the units had to be replaced when new due to quality control issues (blobs of mastic in the middle of an expanse of glass, and on an inner surface - impossible to hide) - one several times due to similar issues !

One of the units that was replaced was done by a "supervisor" who couldn`t even remove the beading cleanly, and to this day it looks like it was attacked by someone with a screwdriver. His ham-fisted attempt to remove the beading also damaged the bay window that the glass unit formed the centre of - the entire bay would have to have been replaced to sort it out properly. We didn`t bother.

Are they still using mechanical joints ? - one of our units still has a small blue piece of plastic sandwiched between a joint that should have been removed prior to assembly - impossible to remove properly once the window was constructed.

A side-issue of the construction of ours is that there was a roll of neoprene that had to be pushed into place around the unit to form a seal - this was pulled a little too tight, and over the years it contracted and pulled away from the corners - I haven`t been able to find a supplier for this stuff, so have to poke it back in every time I move the net curtains and notice it shrunk again.

A couple of cross-members have "dropped" visibly, as though there was insufficient reinforcement, leading the plastic to droop, and on one window in particular, there is a considerable rust stain, which I suspect might be due to a piece of cut reinforcement not being sealed / dipped / galvanised. Fortunately its at the back of the house, and not visible unless you walk past it (sods law, its a ground floor window)

[Andy Hall]

No.

[R.P.McMurphy]

NO. Spend your hard earned cash on having some hardwood double glassed windows fitted instead, they will last a life time or two, rather than 20 years tops for the UPVC type.

Steve

[Séan Connolly]

Thats interesting, we used to get the double glazing sales people round our estate at least once a week, which considering the whole estate was built with hardwood double glazing from the off you might think was a bit daft.

A common sales tatic was: "would sir like to upgrade to UPVC"

err, no!