Owning your own home

uPVC rather than wood sash

I dream of replacing our sash windows with PVC ones.

Our neighbours have them, and it looks almost indistinguishable, except the windows open and close properly, and don't rot.

Ventrolla will replace shagged out old sashes with new double glazed wood ones and repair the boxes for ~£1k per window (with decent discounts if you have many windows).

Create more heat with a wood burning stove

Presumably you have a heating system already?

Yeah uPVC sash, the contractor who is doing other work got them (and installed)

I am in SE london, i can give you the contact if you need.

Amey, any chance I could persuade you to pop in a few times next week to top up my cat feeders/water bowls?

sure! I am not good with animals .. if you give me instructions like I am 5 I am sure I can follow.

Both cats have automated feeders, the one for Higgs will last the entire time we are away, but the one for James runs out every three days (approx). The water bowl will easily last the three days, although if I'm at home I refill it every day (profligate water wastrel that I am).

So! Pop in every three days, transfer some food from the hopper that feeds Higgs' feeder into James' one, top the water bowl up, bosh. Sound do-able?

You do realise you're not in a PM? I mean, just in case.

For us, curtains have been fine*.

It's probably possible to fairly accurately estimate how much energy is lost through the current windows and therefore how much you'd save per year with double-glazing.
I did a crude evaluation instead - given that our gas bill is currently ~£900 a year, even at 100% saving it would take 21 years to make back the outlay on our lowest quote for a complete re-glaze. Refurbing would take 10 years to recoup at 100% saving, so is more of an option but we will probably do on a window-by-window case as they require it. We would still need curtains after this anyway!

*Our average room temps are not tropical and there is a large wood burner for our most-used living space.

You do realise you're not in a PM? I mean, just in case.

Yeah, was out and about earlier so lazily just dropped the conversation into the thread.

My laziness knows no bounds.

Just before you tell the internet which flowerpot the door key is under...

The cats are extremely fierce.

Way to spoil it for the rest of us.

The guy I used charged £300 (plus 5% vat) for refurb or £1,100 (£800 at 20% vat and £300 at 5% vat) for new hardwood double glazed (the quality of the hardwood ones was way above some others I had installed).

At some point I'll probably try and work out the impact (my thermostat has loads of data to download but I got a loft conversion at the same time which complicates things).

Having windows that smoothly open and close is a big bonus though.

uPVC sash,

Imo timber is worth saving and waiting for over uPVC just for the looks
Still way better than non sash windows though

/Opinion

Does anyone have a recommendation for a chartered surveyor? The last one I found in this thread was Structures Made Easy but they didn't reply to my email.

If it's North London this guy has been good for me.
http://northlondonsurveyor.co.uk/

Agreed. Wooden look way nicer inside and out.

Yep I suspect it doesn’t make sense financially only on utility bills but smooth opening + noise mitigation more than makes up the difference.

In my experience the best tradespeople seem to be good on the phone but terrible with emails... YMMV

Yeah I’d love sashes that work as sashes.

Wooden sash master race

All this talk of sashes.
What is this NIFGSS?

Electrostatic filters and a modern stove with a biomass and eco fuel really do answer this problem.

Is this actually true?

Regardless, proper curtains are probably the sensible and easy choice.

I got that reference