Back to work

Back from a great week gliding in Yorkshire. Sharing Janus A Delta 31 with a great team, Brian and I managed to stay in the top half of the entrants in the 25th Two-Seater competition at Pocklington. Just three great flying days saw us complete more than 700km from Newark in the south to Thirsk in the north, via Driffield and Knaresborough in the east and west. The English countryside at its best, with air like crystal clear champagne.

Back to find lots of great business prospects on all fronts, and a really nice e-mail from a past client expressing delight in the ease of maintenance and wanting more windows.

I must catch up with the dissertation on slimline sealed units soon.

A diversion

I'm currently talking to other businesses about outsourcing a great deal of business to them, and have been surprised at several who have turned away the prospect of very simple profitable repeat business without even considering what's required. It's led me to reflect on my earlier experiences in manufacturing, and the constant struggle to get the staff to follow the laid-down procedures to the letter, without gradually omitting the bits they have difficulty with. Even the managers were complicit, and it was a constant battle to prevent them doing their own thing. I'm sure McDonalds don't have this problem (or do they?)

It strikes me that part of the problem was (and still is) the fact that employees generally are no longer terrified of losing their job, these days. Not that they should be expected to lie awake at night with their eyes sticking out like chapel hat-pegs (as many small business-owners do, as they wonder how they are going to pay the wages at the end of the month), but they ought surely to be concerned that if they don't do their job properly they might be shown the door. It's so time-consuming getting rid of unsatisfactory staff these days - difficult and fraught with danger - that quality and output may suffer to the detriment of the whole business. Call me old-fashioned, but hungry staff are going to be very much more diligent than those with a couldn't-care-less attitude. It's why I avoid employing anyone at all these days.

In my first week as a trainee metallurgist with the Heat Treatment Service of the then nationalised West Midlands Gas Board in 1961 I was told " Don't worry, lad. They can't sack you whatever you do." It shocked me even then, that such attitudes could prevail.
It got better under Maggie for a while, but we lost a lot of ground under New Labour. I suspect that our dire economic position with the lean and hungry Indians biting at our heels might require a change of heart, again.

Back to the double-glazing.

Gas filling is the last step (to date) in achieving a small but significant improvement in U-value, (according to the published U-value calculators) but is perhaps the most difficult to explain. Air is a wonderful insulator - generally accepted to be the best of all - but three of the inert gases are reported to have better insulating qualities still, despite being heavier (and therefore denser). Logic might suggest that they might conceivably be better sound insulators but worse thermal insulators. Clearly there's more to this than meets the eye, as I have seen it claimed that these heavier gases - which also convect, of course - are at their best at successively smaller glass spacings. On that basis, it appears that an argon-filled DGU with a 12mm spacer ought to perform better than one with a 16mm spacer. Not according to my BRE U-value calculator it doesn't. I rather think that the benefits are questionable. However, for my preferred 20mm DGU (12mm spacer) argon confers a demonstrable and affordable reduction of 0.2 in the U-value of an average-size domestic window installation. Whether it's cost effective is arguable. Whether the use of expensive krypton or eye-wateringly expensive xenon is ever justified is highly, highly questionable. The claim that either (or, most puzzling of all, a mixture - in just what proportions?) of these two gases miraculously tranforms a 4mm gap into an efficient insulating unit is emphatically NOT borne out by the published U-value calculators from our most reputable authorities.

On a cheering note: Yesterday, a passing trio of canvassers for a national pvc window company told my wife (working in the front garden) that they wouldn't bother to pester her, as our wood windows were clearly excellent, and she wasn't going to be interested in what they were pushing. Knowing that pvc salesmen never have an option up their sleeve for those they encounter who really do want wood, I suggested they point such leads in my direction. They jumped at the opportunity. Other canvassers, form a queue here, please.

More digression

I have spent the last few days completely re-writing the website, which along with an ongoing discussion on rising damp on Philip Rougiers forum (http://forum.expertexpert.com/index.php) hasn't left much time to continue the thoughts on slimlite DGUs. I'm now busy with preparing a new pitch to a potential big client, so it'll have to wait a bit longer.