Wood or UPVC

[gentlegreen]

Wood often ends up warping, & UPVC looks shite. Horrible looking stuff. Why don't more people have aluminium?

Aluminium windowframes seem to be quite common on the continent, but just about no-one here has them... are they well expensive or something?

(& yeah, they'll not be as ecologically sound as sustainably grown wood, but I shouldn't imagine that's first on most pple's list of priorities)

UPVC is almost certainly cheaper to produce. The extraction of aluminium requires vast amounts of energy (electricity).
Also more complex to manufacture in that a thermal insulation layer has to be inserted to prevent "thermal bridges".
White is more acceptable as a colour for frames and paint is notoriously bad at sticking to aluminium.

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[pembrokestephen]

UPVC is almost certainly cheaper to produce. The extraction of aluminium requires vast amounts of energy (electricity).
Also more complex to manufacture in that a thermal insulation layer has to be inserted to prevent "thermal bridges".
White is more acceptable as a colour for frames and paint is notoriously bad at sticking to aluminium.

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Al anodises quite nicely, though - I'm sure I've seen very nice-looking white aluminium windows.

The wood problem looks good until we start doing it: the difficulty we have with wood now is that usage is so high that it's very hard to come by properly seasoned timber that isn't going to warp, crack, or dry out. Most of it's kiln-dried, which doesn't make it very stable.

Outfits like IKEA get away with using a lot of wood product because they use particle- or fibreboard which doesn't have the problems of natural wood. But I'm not sure if you can make windowframes out of that yet

 

[kebabking]

Where does this come from? I don't believe it exists

UPVC is recycled plastic, its been coke bottles and wheelie bins before its current incarnation, its usually a mix of recycled and 'virgin' PVC, the lower the quantity of recycled PVC the higher quality the plastic.

if you bought PVCu windows from a decent supplier - Everest, Weatherseal, Werru etc.. the PVC would be very different to the PVC from Anglian, B&Q or billy from the pub.

good windows will last 45 years, shite windows start to fall apart after 5 - big difference.

 

[trashpony]

I hate my upvc windows. But they'll cost me a fortune to replace (£500 for one door ) so I think I'm stuck with them

One day I'll rip the lot out and put the sash windows back

 

[Alf Klein]

UPVC is recycled plastic, its been coke bottles and wheelie bins before its current incarnation, its usually a mix of recycled and 'virgin' PVC, the lower the quantity of recycled PVC the higher quality the plastic.

UPVC is not recycled plastic. Its just PVC with a certain density. It may be possible to make it by recycling PVC I suppose.

Aren't coke bottles and other 'food' contaiers are made of polyethylene? This is recyled but, it seems that when you add PVC to the mix, it fucks things up

http://www.grrn.org/pvc/


http://www.ecvm.org/code/page.cfm?id_page=116

 

[gentlegreen]

UPVC is recycled plastic, its been coke bottles and wheelie bins before its current incarnation, its usually a mix of recycled and 'virgin' PVC, the lower the quantity of recycled PVC the higher quality the plastic.

if you bought PVCu windows from a decent supplier - Everest, Weatherseal, Werru etc.. the PVC would be very different to the PVC from Anglian, B&Q or billy from the pub.

good windows will last 45 years, shite windows start to fall apart after 5 - big difference.

Let me guess who you work for .......

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