Ever since we moved in to our flat nearly 3 years ago I have never stopped complaining about feeling cold in the flat especially during winter seasons. With the weather in January this year exceptionally cold, we felt like as if we were living in a fridge.
After a careful research and obtaining several quotations we made the decision to invest in our flat by installing secondary glazing to all the three huge windows. The existing windows were single glazed except the second bedroom with double glazing but we thought it would be good to do all three in one go to improve both the thermal and sound insulation.
The installation was arranged to take place on Sunday the 8th February 2009, starting 9-10am, and would last for 3 to 4 hours.
We woke up early on the day, started removing the curtains as well as cleaning the windows and the window boards ready for the installation.
However we waited and waited for a long time, and eventually the fixer with his assistant showed up at noon. Without much delay they started immediately.
The existing windows.
We were lucky to have a wide window board as the secondary glazing needs to sit approximately 100mm away from the original windows to achieve the desired effect.
The 'materials on site'
The tool boxes
They started by installing the upstairs bedrooms. The fixer told us he had never fixed a glazing to window such as this size before. Yes, we know we have big size windows that's why majority of the heat loss are through the windows.
Since the curtains were already down we took the opportunity to wash and dry them under the bright sun.
Our windows are so big that each of them requires two pairs of curtains. There were a lot of laundry to do.
Solely depending on the sun would never have our curtains dried for the night so there were more ironing to do. It was really busy day for us....
Right... back to the original subject. We were really worried because by this time they were still doing our bedroom, and it had taken them nearly 3 hours fiddling around. Apparently they got problem trying to drill holes into the concrete lintels with their not-so-powerful tool. So the assistant had to go back to the shop and get the right one, and once gone it took him an hour to come back.
With the right tool in hands works were back on track. Fairly quickly they moved on to the second bedroom.
The finished products
Second bedroom:
Main bedroom:
Unfortunately one of the panels was cut a bit bigger than required. They had to take it back and trim off 2cm at the edge and bring it back the next day.
And within seconds Frankie was seen with his
Dyson.
Finally they proceeded to the down stair lounge.
Telling from the dark sky outside it was late and they had only finished the work just before 7pm. A total of 7 hours work instead of the original 3-4 hours. However to their credits they had never stopped working at all since noon!
We were kind enough to 'reward' him with full payment on the day since they worked really hard to complete the job even though there was still one panel to be rectified in our bedroom.
Needless to say we only got back the rectified panel three days later due to his busy schedule. And we are still waiting for the 10 years warranty he promised! Yup... they are warranted for 10 years! Not bad....
With all the panels now properly fixed, we can really feel the difference. Hope the money we invested is worth in the long run and get a much reduced bill in the future!
