Ugly uPVC Windows and Should you Change Them?

Plastic UPVC windows don't have to be ugly, although they often are, compared to traditional windows. This is because whoever specifies the uPVC windows will usually chose the cheapest. However this isn't always the case.  

This is a house with ugly uPVC windows. I happen to live in this house. I didn't specify the windows, I bought the house with them already in situ. These windows won't have been the cheapest option in the brochure, either. they're solid, don't leak and have secure locks. But somehow the person who chose this design wasn't satisfied with the appearance of vertical sashes, they decided to specify a thin horizontal member to be put through the double glazed panels, giving the appearance of Lego. Nothing wrong with Lego, It's one of the best ever educational toys, but most people don't want to live in Lego buildings.

The house has an even uglier door in similar material, presumably chosen to the taste of the owner some twenty years ago. But I haven't chosen to change the door, or the windows, because they all still work. The windows open and close, as does the door. The double glazed panels are in working order. Therefore I chose to live with somebody else's taste because I won't replace something which works just for the sake of change. It's currently an unnecessary expense, and environmentally undesirable. Many old units are not disposed of sustainable, although this is increasingly possible to do

Some double glazing companies now promote zero-landfill policies, which means every part of your old window, down to the last screw, is either reused, repurposed, or recycled. These companies often work directly with uPVC recycling plants, collect scrap metal for processing and offer take-back schemes or green disposal guarantees. 

If sustainability is a priority for you and your client, it’s worth asking potential installers what their policy is before making a commitment. If sustainability is not a priority for you or your client, maybe you should, ask why not? 

Season's greetings From ArchiFACT

 

Windows with Character

 

Window set into the corner of a modernist building on Exhibition Road in London. 

The Things Men Do With Ladders - number whatever.

 I haven't posted one of these for four years, but I couldn't ignore this.. what else is there to say?

How Many Offices Does ArchiFACT Need?

A recent job for ArchiFACT was an arbitration concerning a site in the Middle East with clients based on two different continents. No site visit was necessary for ArchiFACT, our report was based on evidence provided electronically and emails with the client.

The Arbitration process itself involved Arbitrators in three time zones, however the hearing involved very little travel for us. ArchiFACT’s expert travelled 65 miles by train and taxi from our Head Office in St Leonards-on-Sea to the lawyers offices in the City of London.

The hearing was conducted entirely via multiple video links and, if placed end to end, the total length of cables running between the pieces of tech in each of the individual offices of the arbitrators,  clients, experts and lawyers could well have been greater than the distance travelled by our expert.

The question arising was, does ArchiFACT, or indeed any consultancy, need separate offices in the North of England and another in the South, when almost everything except for site visits could be done sitting at a desk?

Drawing the obvious conclusion, ArchiFACT’s Yorkshire office is now closed. From 30 May 2024 all business will be conducted from our Sussex Office in St Leonards-on-Sea.

We can be contacted initially on any matter on:- 

01424 259597

or via email – fact@ArchiFACT.co.uk.

9/11 Where I Was Not

 On our first and my only trip to the USA, Rob and I spent a week in New York intending to be total tourists, before moving on to visit friends Stan and Jen in Medford Lakes, NJ.

If our original itinerary had worked out, we'd have been in New York and would probably have done the Twin Towers and the Empire State Building on the 9th September. Once actually there, the more enigmatic Empire State came first, but might not have done if it hadn't been closer to our hotel. This budget hotel had roaches in the shower and smelled mouldy, but that was ok, it was exciting, we were in the Big Apple!

Luckily, because of various minor complications like Stan and Jen being on holiday in the West Indies and because BA's discounted airmiles tickets weren't available when we'd originally planned to go, we'd reversed the order of our trip and went to Medford Lakes after New York. We never made it to the World Trades Centre and I am eternally grateful for those minor complications.

Watching the events on live TV, while in the safe living room of Stan and Jen's charming log-cabin home, on the shore of the lake, was terrifying. None of us could believe what we were seeing. 

We spent half the day frantically trying to phone home, to reassure our family in England that we were safe. All the mobile lines were completely overloaded and landlines weren't much better. Eventually Rob managed to get an email through to his father in Leeds and asked him to please phone my mother in Hastings to tell her we were safe. We carried on watching the inadequate TV reports while Stan managed to get in touch with his cousins in New York, who thankfully were safe too. 

Just as alarming was seeing that there was nobody on top of this. Politicians were panicking and TV channels had no known pattern, no appropriate template to follow, on how to report an event of this magnitude which was actually happening to their fellow American citizens, not people in far off lands of whom they knew little and cared less.

The pristine, primped and botoxed newsreaders unemotionally reported on whatever garbled messages emerged from the authorities, (with jollifying adverts) between distraught and panic-stricken vox-pops. The reporters were without a hair or tear out of place and the requisite toothy grins were still plastered on their shiny faces, their body language mocking the horrors they were failing to report in any meaningful way.

There was no information.

Later in the day I went alone for a swim in the lake, it was peaceful and temporarily soothing.

                                                                           *

I don’t deliberately try to mark 9/11. The stress (mine), the horror (everyone's) and the fear (the victims), is something I'd like to forget, although I won't. The only events which have come close to affecting me that much since are the horrific Grenfell Tower fire and most recently the impossibly hopeless evacuation of desperate people from Kabul. The only earlier event to have the same effect was, as a child, watching reports from Aberfan. I felt I was one of those children, experiencing that horror.

Lighthouses at Dungeness 2

 According to this website, there have been not five lighthouses and Dungeness, which is how far my research led me, but seven. Two were low lights not the high ones I'd found. The first was constructed in 1884 in metal on a wooden base and included a huge foghorn. The second came in 1932 as a replacement for the metal structure which was by then, unsurprisingly, in need of extensive repairs. The 1930's structure was subsequently demolished to make way for the fifth high tower which was needed so the light wasn't obscured to the west by the nuclear power station.

Both the fifth high tower, which became an unmanned, automatic light, and the Dungeness nuclear power station  remain in operation today.

This article is fascinating, do read it! :-

Lighthouses at Dungeness - Romney Marsh, The Fifth Continent (theromneymarsh.net)