If you are like us, and the majority of the population, you own a house with single pane windows. It’s all very well having single pane windows in a warmer / dry climate, but somewhere like New Zealand where the temperatures fluctuate and can be quite damp, you do need more than this. Especially if your children get sick easily, or have respiratory illnesses (such as asthma).
In the winter, our windows can be DRIPPING with condensation; and if we don’t keep on top of it, the walls will get mouldy. This can happen in the lounge, bedrooms and of course the bathroom.
Because we have a child with Asthma, it’s become extremely important for us to have our house warm and dry – but it’s hard when you’re working with an older house. We have insulated our house the best we can, but obviously the windows were a source of heat loss and moisture.
We were very fortunate to have our windows retrofitted with double glazing by the Retrofit Double Glazing team, and I wanted to share with you information about this process, and how you can go about getting it done yourself.
WHAT IS DOUBLE GLAZING?
Double glazing is essentially windows which have two layers of glass with a space between them. They’re made this way to reduce the loss of heat, to reduce noise, and of course reduce or remove condensation build up in the colder weather.
On a cold day, you’ll notice that window panes feel cold – often they’ll be as cold as the air is outside. When the inside air (which is warm), hits the cold windowpane, the heat escapes outside.
Curtains obviously keep some of the warmth inside, but the best way to ensure the heat stays inside the house, is some form of double glazing.
WHY RETROFIT THE DOUBLE GLAZING?
There are two options when it comes to double glazing – completely remove the glass and frames, and replace with new double glazed glass and frames. OR retrofit the existing frames, with double glazing.
Retrofitting double glazing is the process of replacing your single glazed windows, with double glazed ones.
As you can well imagine, replacing ALL of the joinery (as well as the windows) is much more expensive. Unless you are building from scratch, retrofitting is your best (and cost effective) option.
The great thing about retrofitting your windows with double glazing, is that you don’t have to do all of the windows at once. You can prioritise your spending by concentrating on south facing windows first – these get very little sun, which means they lose more heat than they gain. Or of course, you can do the lot.
The double glazing that the Retrofit Double Glazing team offer is not a low quality, clip-on solution. Their double glazing solutions are purpose built for each home, fully warranted and meets the current building code requirements. All materials can be colour matched to suit your existing window frames.
OUR EXPERIENCE
The Retrofit Double Glazing team came out and talked me through the whole process. As someone who has no idea how this worked, I needed a bit of an explanation; and they were amazing and super friendly (which I always appreciate!). We then discussed the best rooms to get the double glazing done – and decided to do the lounge, kitchen, and Chloe’s bedroom (she’s our Asthmatic child).
We also got our ranch slider, in the lounge, retrofitted as well. You can’t retrofit the windows and leave out the ranch slider – would be a bit pointless! Of course, they can do this too ????
They then measured the windows, and ranch slider, and took away the details to give us a quote.
From here, we confirmed what we wanted, and they set to work on fabricating the new double glazing. Three weeks later, and this happened:
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If you’d like to get yourself a quote, be sure to contact the Retrofit Double Glazing team – it’s free, and is well worth it! Just click the http://bit.ly/RetroFitHMHC link!
Check out my video here:
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