uPVC Windows – Olivia Learned Her Lesson Well
I dropped in to meet my old friend Olivia last week. I heard that she had fitted new uPVC windows in her apartment and I wanted to see how they had worked out. Olivia was thrilled with the uPVC windows. Her old windows had been very poor in terms of energy efficiency and the apartment had always been difficult to heat.
When she went to look at purchasing windows, she had brought her uncle with her and he had shown her what to look out for when purchasing windows. ‘Did you know that there are have labels on all of the windows, actually telling you how good they are?’, she said. ‘The problem is you have to be able to decipher what they are saying’.
For instance she told me that the U-factor in uPVC windows is a measure of how well the window stops heat from escaping from the property. ‘I had heard of R-values, but seemingly the U-factor is a better measurement for windows, she said. ‘The lower the value, the better the window is supposed to be’.
Then she went on to confuse me with the term solar heat gain coefficient. She laughed and told me that it was simply a measure of the ability of something like a window to prevent heat from getting into the home. She said that this was important in the summer.
After that she had me totally bamboozled with terms such a visible transmittance, air leakage and condensation resistance. ‘They are not as complicated as they sound’, Olivia said. ‘Visible transmittance is the ability of the window to let in light, air leakage is a measure of it’s capacity to stop air leaking in from the outside and condensation resistance calculates how well uPVC windows, or any other window resists allowing condensation to form.
‘We had great fun checking the labels on all of the uPVC windows in the salesroom’, Olivia laughed. ‘In the end the salesman gave us a very good deal, because of our persistence. So it does pay to know what the information on the labels stands for’.
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Tagged: energy efficiency, Solar heat gain coefficient, U-factor, upvc window, upvc windows
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