The "greening" of England (2)

A big problem with traditional wood windows is that they do not take sealed unit double glazing well. Even when heavily modified to accept sealed units, the edge cover or the drainage (or both) is often inadequate, or the frame is excessively bulky. That doesn’t stop manufacturers making them and customers buying them. By the time the problems show up, the seller is often long gone. I have stood in the lounge of the very expensive home of a retired Captain of Industry who was apoplectic with rage because he couldn’t see out of a single one of his large picture windows. All of them fogged up just one year past their 5-year guarantee, and the manufacturer (not me) had shrugged his shoulders and walked away.

The problems first became evident to me many years ago when I was asked to replace a neighbour’s 1930s bay windows. I made them out of untreated softwood, primed the frame, then bedded 14mm sealed units in butyl mastic (I said it was a long time ago) leaving the customer to paint the topcoats himself. Not ideal, I decided.

A year earlier, I had been building loft conversions as a sub-contractor, and had discovered that an aluminium window went in, fully finished, in about two hours, but next day the customer was bending my ear about the gallons of water all over the floor (from condensation, of course). (PVC hadn’t yet arrived in the UK, although there were rumours of them appearing on the continent).

A wood window, however, (usually a stock item from the Boulton and Paul catalogue) glazed with stepped units looked horrible and took days to install, glaze and paint. Out on a 45 degree roof, in the rain or snow it was no fun at all, and I soon decided there must be a better way to make a wood window.

After the experience with the softwood bay, I sat down with a sharp pencil and a clean sheet of paper and designed the first prototype of the Supawood window.

I decided from the start it had to be:
· a good-looking product that would sell to my customers in traditional Warwickshire cottages
· technically excellent
· fully finished in the factory before glazing.
· glazed in the factory before installation
· capable of being installed in a flash in all weathers.
· Guaranteed zero-callback (ie no jamming, warping, or swelling to deal with)

From the start I concluded that channel glazing was necessary to get a 20mm sealed unit into a traditional 2” profile, and mechanical fixing was necessary to allow the glazing to be replaced if necessary. The early versions still involved carrying heavy glazed sub-frames up ladders, but that was soon changed in favour of an inside fitting version, and it fast became clear that there was no way I would ever want to return to carrying glass up a ladder in the rain.

The development of the present version took many years of continuous refinement, with some useful ideas coming up along the way. It’s a long story with many twists and turns, but it does look as if, with the advent of this new miracle timber, the SupaWOOD window is about to truly justify its name.

More next week.