Summer-time, and the film is failing

In July I first noticed that on three of the four windows on which I had installed double-glazing film last winter (see post of 12.12.09) the film was starting to flap loose, coming away from the double-sided tape - which appeared to be drying out. Nearly a year to the day after this installation (and nearly 25 years to the year since I did this in our last house) I was stripping this off and installing secondary glazing of clear acrylic sheets (Perspex), held in place by magnetic strips. Tip-off of source of necessary supplies came from Jamie Auld at Transition Edinburgh South. Perspex – Easter Road Plastics (Edinburgh readers note no longer in Easter Road); magnetic strips – Indigo Industrial Supplies. Cost – Perspex £50 for each 3mm sheet for the two windows approx. 1 by 1.8 metre each. Tape - £45.71 including VAT and delivery for 30m of steel and adhesive tape – enough for at least four more windows of the same size

Noticeable increase in warmth and decrease in draughts in the two rooms. Slight warning on installation – a 1m x 1.8m sheet of 3mm Perspex can be quite heavy. Unless you can insure a 100% perfect fit between the magnetic tape on the sheet and the steel tape on the window (for instance on old windows that may not be truly square), the sheet may drop/slide - if it is not resting on the bottom of the window opening. This can be countered either by fitting a strip of edging to support the sheet at the bottom (NOT illustrated - the images are of the second window, where I had to fit a strip of wood at the bottom of the window to pick up the line of the window jambs on the other three sides) or reducing the thickness of the Perspex to 2mm, with some presumed reduction in UV value.

I also did a third small above-door window (in 2mm sheet) and will probably go on now to do the single-glazed panel in the front door, and the window above this.

More action on the cold windows

Used a spare roll of insulation to fill up the gap between the kitchen window and the back of the cupboards in front of it to ‘kill’ that block of cold air before it comes further into the room. It does feel warmer in there now, but think this window might be the first one to lok at in terms of draught-proofing and double or secondary glazing.

Door draughts

Fitted a new Weatherbar at the base of the front door; there was a tiny label saying EXITEX on the old one and through Google I tracked down the company (in Northern Ireland) and a local stockist D F Wishart in Edinburgh. Cost - £13.99 plus VAT. Fitted new rubber seal around the top and sides of the door and tore off the old plastic strip in the door frame to replace it with the wonderful Atomic Draught Excluder Strip (‘The original copper alloy strip – guaranteed for 10 years’) Easy to fit and even without the ‘Atomic Springing Tool’ quick to get it into its optimum draught-sealing shape with a ball-point pen.

What we had already done in the house

Since buying the house in 1998 we hadn’t been completely inactive.

The windows – secondary glazing and draught-proofing. When we bought the house 10 of the windows already had secondary glazing fitted (Everest, aluminium sliding in brush-fitted track, no date). Finding much of this clunky, ill-fitting and difficult to clean in 2005 we removed this from 4 of these windows, and had these fitted with ‘Sealglide’ brush draught-proofing, serviced, and put back. We were pretty pleased with this work – the windows looked better, let in less draughts, also less noise, and the removal of the secondary glazing caused no appreciable loss of heat. Other windows received moderate ‘servicing’ to fit more tightly when closed but we could not afford to give them all the full draught-proofing treatment. Some of the windows (in many cases the upper window of the sliding sash) had no provision for opening at all and we firmly sealed them to again minimise draughts.

The windows – curtains, blinds and shutters. In the living room we are lucky enough to have the original wooden shutters over both windows – they are not the tightest fit but mean we don’t have to have curtains hanging over the radiators that are under these windows. Two downstairs rooms also have shutters and all other windows have curtains and/or fabric blinds on them, in some cases both.

The boiler. In January 2009 a major part failed in the gas boiler that we inherited with the house (precise age not known): this heats our water and provides central heating to radiators in 12 rooms, (in summer we turn off the boiler and use an immersion to heat the water). We made a snap decision to replace it with a new condenser boiler (Greenstar 30 CDi Conventional). It is a SEDBUK A-rated appliance, and although in retrospect it might have been nice to have had the time to lok into a fuller range of options including air-source heat pumps, (a) I didn’t know about these then and (b) it was damn cold at the time.