Cheapest way of Double Glazing your windows

double glazing often becomes one of the last steps that my clients make when improving the energy efficiency of their homes this is due to the large upfront expense and the prolonged payback period that's associated with major works like replacing every window in a house i've seen quotes in the tens of thousands of dollars where double glazing costs around a thousand dollars per square metre a replacement double hung window kit will cost around sixteen hundred dollars thirty percent of this home's wall space is windows at 66 square meters worth of double glazing this client has an enormous outlay if they're looking at improving the thermal comfort of this home i'll be showing you a low cost retrofit solution that's almost a tenth of the cost of double glazing with a measurable result to the hot and cold weather comfort rating via a residential efficiency scorecard assessment firstly i'll be using a 16 millimeter pvc channel which is available from your local hardware shop and very easy to cut to size attach double-sided tape to improve the ease of installation remove the backing of the tape and attach the offset to the existing window jambs seal the edge of the pvc channel with clear silicon and remove the backing of the double-sided tape on the front face ready to attach our new glazing i've chosen a four and a half millimeter acrylic panel as a secondary glazing material it's ultra clear readily available and your local plastic sheet trader can cut this to size for you on the spot best of all it's actually less thermally conductive than glass exactly what we need to improve the thermal comfort of this home install the secondary glazing seal the perimeter and once the silicone has cured fasten your choice of timber quad to suit your desired finish i've used a brad nailer with 25 millimeter nails for this exercise feel free to use a hammer with nails finally seal the quad with another bead of silicon we've spent 220 on acrylic sheet 31.20 on pvc channel 24 on timber quad and made use of some white acrylic paint to suit the window trims in this house that's a total cost of 275 dollars and 20 cents or 122 dollars per square meter if we were to install a brand new double glazed system in this space alone we'd be up for around 2255 so what happens to our residential efficiency scorecard rating when we make this change our original energy star rating before conducting works was 7.3 stars with a hot weather comfort rating of 1 bar and a cold weather comfort rating of 2 bars out of 5. following our calculator's guidelines if we add retrofit style wall insulation first also known as blow-in wall insulation we boost our star rating up to 8 stars with an improvement to our cold weather comfort rating we then see a compounding result to our energy star rating to 8.3 stars when we add our secondary glazing modifications also resulting in a boost to our hot weather comfort rating so at around a tenth of the cost double glazing doesn't have to cost the world glazing alone contributes to around 20 percent of thermal loss in winter so we're reducing a heating and cooling load reducing our energy costs reducing greenhouse gas emissions while we're improving our hot and cold weather comfort rating via secondary glazing at a fraction of the cost

Channel: Ephe - Residential Energy Efficiency

Views: 56,444

Keywords: double glazing, thermal comfort, renovations, inspiration, home improvement, retrofit, secondary glazing, how-to, energy efficiency, residential efficiency, greenhouse gas emission

Id: hgb-wL_VsGM

Length: 3min 28sec (208 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 01 2022