Heartfelt plea not to remove sash windows

[Rooners]

I thought this might just persuade a few people but it seems such a desperate thing, now, with nearly everyone being told by their surveyor or just persuaded by popular trends to replace beautiful old wooden windows with UPVC.

I've been looking at Rightmove and elsewhere SOLIDLY for about 9 months now, and we are only just exchanging contracts this week on a place so I kind of know the scarcity of houses with original windows.

There are SO few.

People are often not aware of the quality of craftsmanship that went into them - or the high quality of wood that you just cannot get these days, even if you use a high end replacement sash company to make brand new ones to match - and assume that they will not last, will be high maintenance, and that the UPVC ones will be superior.

It's really sad but the thing is, UPVC windows have built in obsolescence - they will eventually get black mould or staining on them, which can't be cleaned off, and will generally last around 50 years as opposed to a hundred or two hundred years with properly maintained wooden ones. All it takes is a coat of paint every year or three, and they really do look so much nicer on an old property than plastic ones.

I am biased as I have a background in antique restoration - if someone tried to sell me a Victorian doll and it had had plastic eyes put in instead of hand blown glass ones, I would reject it out of hand.

Houses not so much as there is so little choice these days, and you're goingto find it hard to find something totally original but it just amazes me that people don't realise it lowers the value of the house quite often.

In places where the windows have well and truly fallen apart then fine, of course you need to replace them, and wooden ones cost an absolute bomb so all sympathies with going with what's affordable.

But I think people are being conned frankly into paying for something that supposedly 'improves' your home when in fact it's chipping away steadily at our architectural heritage, to the point where in a few years there just won't be any proper old windows left, and houses that have them, well maintained, will cost a premium.

No offence intended to anyone, anywhere, except for UPVC salesmen and anyone else who profits from this baloney

Hi
One more vote for sash windows I have 7 originals very large and drafty they are beautiful though but

Hi
One more vote for sash windows I have 7 originals very large and drafty they are beautiful though but noisy!
I love them though so will not replace but will restore which is not so expensive then thick curtains. I will also look into child safety feature though I have no children...

I really don't think I will get my money back if I replace with hardwoods which is the only thing I would want to do, I probably won't stay in the house for more than 5 years as well and I figured hey if they've lasted 100 years (they are in not too bad condition) they will probably last long anyway..

OP, we are keeping our sash windows, even though everyone tells us to stick in UPVC! We need to have them renovated though. They are cold and breezy but look beautiful. Our terraced cottage was built in 1870. Most of the panes are the original glass too. I think a couple have been replaced that got cracked.

We live in a conservation area so our big Victorian wooden sash windows have to stay and I am happy about that.

We had a new window cut into the back wall when we changed a bedroom into a kitchen and it is the only double glazed window in the house. It wasn't as expensive as we though it would be (proper treated hard wood wood) given that it also involved cutting a hole in a 3 foot thick sold stone wall

If would afford to, we'd replace the other windows for double glazed sash windows, but as we have 9 large windows (bigger than any of the photos posted) to do, plus 3 small ones (in ds' dormer in the attic), that's not high on our list of priorities at the moment. We might do it one room at a time - so the sums involved aren't quite so eye watering!

Original (rolled) glass is hard to replicate - I mean you can get it made in a similar way but that costs an absolute bomb.

It's one thing you can see straight away in old windows compared with new ones. So even if you go for wooden frames you won't get the same effect I suppose.

I don't think houses should be museums but I hate to see pointless waste.

I can see the odd bubble in our glass!

I'm on the fence. Sash windows can be cold rattly things in winter. And replacing like for like costs the earth. But I suppose they look nice and are 'traditional'. Never mind if you catch cold all winter and your fuel bills are sky high you're a conserving history in your little house. So that must be good.

We had sash windows and whilst they are attractive the sound proofing is rubbish and my heating bills have dramatically reduced since replacing them.

Should have been more explicit: the new window, even though it is at the back of the house and not subject to as strict rules as the front of a house, is still a wooden sash window but because it's new, it had to be double glazed. It does not rattle at all - and the sound proofing is great (the cats can vouch for that: can hear them yowling asking to be let in at the other original window but not so easily at the new window )

Our new sash doesn't rattle and isn't drafty either prettybird.

I live in a 130 yr old Victorian end of terrace in the northwest of England. We have the original sliding sash windows. OH and I have spent the last month or so re painting them all and they look beautiful again. With a bit of TLC and filler I think we can keep them going for another 5 years or so.

Every week we get a young man with leaflet in hand asking if we considered replacing them with upvc and I say they are over 100 yrs old and I hope I look that good when I am 100!

They always look at me like I am mad. We have thick curtains which help keep the breeze out and some plastic sheeting we put on every winter.

We put in new uPVC windows. We got quotes for new wooden sash windows and the lowest was £40k - 15 years ago. 25% of the purchase price of the house on new windows, even if we could have afforded it? I don't think so.

I agree the wooden ones look better but financial considerations often remove the element of choice.

We didn't remove the originals, they'd already been replaced by aluminium, so our uPVC sashes are an improvement on the windows we inherited. Wish we did have the money for wood - and wish our house was worth the expense of wood, but we'd never have got it back on selling.

If it wasn't for the fact you are buying a house I would suspect you are my father OP As an independent joiner who has developed a double glazed sash window system he is on a mission to save sash windows.

There is no need for them to rattle, be draughty or insufficiently noise proofed, and considering the unpleasant chemicals used to make upvc, are considerably more ecological.

Of course there is a certain cost, but as the OP points out, if you want decent upvc they don't exactly come cheap, and you'll have to replace them in 30 years or so anyway. Repaint wooden windows every 3 years or so, refurb every 20 years or so and you're good for decades.

Of course if you have financial limitations then I can fully understand going for the cheapest choice. But upvc really doesn't pay for itself over the long term.

If I'd known PVC sashes existed, I might have gone for them, but instead managed to refurb ours and get secondary glazing done on two bays and two standard sashes, for 1/5 of the price of getting them double glazed.
Secondary glazing is unobtrusive and wonderful - the temperature in our living room rose by 3 degrees immediately.

Sadly many sash windows locally are being replaced by the cheapest PVC casements - even in the listed pub, which would annoy me less if the council were less anal about home improvements.

I've read that this is one of the things that will devalue a house.

I won't have them. However, round our way it costs on average around £3000 per window to have timber double glazed sash windows installed.

We have the original shutters in the living room, and thick curtains as well. We still shiver!

Our old house was a victorian terrace with sashes, they were in oretty dire condition (one had both been painted shut, and rotted at the bottom) and we got a local guy to take them out, reconstruct the bits that needed replacing, then reinstall and paint. No more rattles, no breezes, looked great, original glass etc. Cost about 3k for two double width ones at the front and three at the back, much much less than replacing them.

yep, what is the point of big windows if you need to keep curtains drawn/shutters closed just to stay warm?

well, obviously that's in the evening when you're sitting still on the sofa for a period of time. During the day it's neither here nor there.

Themummy - I like your Dad! Excellent post. I'm not suggesting everyone fork out for replacement wooden sash windows - just think twice before taking out the originals because often there is no need to and it's far cheaper to restore/repair/double glaze/draughtproof them.

It's odd but our flat seems very warm considering - maybe it's because the prevailing wind comes in off the side that's attached, so it has some protection? But it's turn of the century, and the bay window at the front is 10ft wide and 9ft tall, the ceilings being mostly 10-11ft high.

The main rooms are both roughly 18ft by 14ft and then there's a dining room, kitchen, another bedroom, large hallways and two bathrooms/loos. We have massive floor to ceiling original single glazed French doors to the back, the bay to the front (which does not open, at all, ever, and all the cords are gone/joins are painted shut. All the other windows are old sash except for one. Only one of them opens.

It doesn't get cold. Not really. Not rattly either except in the small bedroom where the window is operable. I did invest in thick curtains but those were about £300 for one set and £100 for the other (second hand but lovely condition). We rent and have been here for 6 years and our gas bill isn't bad at all - obviously off all summer but it's about 50-70 a month all in at the moment.

Elec is minimal, we don't have to have any supplementary heaters. It's a huge floor area with a very damp cellar and we have 15 rads (only 3 worked when we moved in and the Potterton boiler was 25 years old, and I had it replaced and flushed out) I think most of our heat goes through the ceiling - our upstairs neighbours say they don't often have theirs on at all!

We only have it set to 18ish usually or maybe 20 if it's super cold outside. Single thickness walls as well, and bare floorboards mostly. I wonder what it is about the house. Maybe just the fact they are all coated in paint, seals the draughts!

should say the French doors open with a shove but there is a slightly knackeredwooden conservatory beyond those, which must help a LOT, I can't imagine not having that and just a leaky old pair of doors.

Next door still has her doors and windows, she must have had them all restored - they are beautiful, no conservatory, and her house is on the market for £850K (whole house, not flats!)

Another vote for proper sash windows. We live on a lovely street of victorian terraces and it breaks my heart to see the amount of wooden sashes replaced with completely out of character UPVC and gasps porches added. When we bought our house we knew the windows had to be replaced, and asked for money off accordingly.

I think it's part of buying and caring for a period house to renovate sensitively. We replaced the old, very poorly maintained wooden windows with newly built wooden sashes. They were more expensive and it's not quite the same as the old rolled glass loveliness but when I look at our home from the outside it looks 'right' and we think our investment will pay back when we come to sell the house. It took us nearly 3 years to save the money to do it but it's been worth it - they are warm and unrattly too.

I do understand what PPs have said about the amount of money involved but I think that's part of the deal when you buy an older house. If it's not something you want to do then maybe a more modern house is a better investment. It's the same thing as looking after your hair and teeth - nothing will look good if the basics aren't right.

Yes I agree about if you don't like older properties, try and avoid buying one - but sadly people don't always think like that. They buy an older house to 'do it up' and end up ruining it.

There's an example not far from us which was in need of renovation, sold to 'doer uppers' and they have wrecked it and now it won't sell at all.

It's just too modern and in really bad taste to boot. People in that area chuck out the most beautiful windows - stained glass especially - I often get the urge in the middle of the night to go and scour the skips and try and rescue the poor old lovely windows, but sadly it's too dangerous an area to go lurking about in at night, or even in the day time really.

Makes me want to kill someone. I am absolutely normal I promise

Taste is subjective (and often class-based). Just because you don't like something, it doesn't make it objectively 'in bad taste'. You just happen to gave taste shared by the elites in the country so you think it's 'good taste'.

People don't gave the housing choices you seem to imagine they do. Sometimes there's no choice but to buy an old, terraced house. That's all there is in their budget. They don't owe their house nor the past anything. And they may well value the thermal efficiency of the house very highly, and not want to put up plastic sheeting and have super thick curtains just to try not to freeze.

I find all the fetishising (certain aspects of) the past quite silly. Give it 50 years and we'll have all these middle class people lamenting those who ripped out the 'beautiful, period artex' in houses built in the 70s and 80s.

People don't gave the housing choices you seem to imagine they do. I agree entirely with the points you make and thought I had said that already, but I haven't been very clear actually.

I think it often comes down to what is available locally and what people can afford, not necessarily what they prefer.

But some people do have a really poor idea of what works and what is nice to look at. Yes taste is subjective but you can gauge what is generally liked or not by looking at what sells and what hangs about on the market for many months because it's just frankly hideous.

I don't think that it's true that people don't owe their houses anything. Of course no one can oblige people to treat a property with due respect or thoughtfulness. And it is more important to live comfortably than to live in a museum.

But it's not that hard to have a bit of both. If sash windows were unfeasible, made people miserable, could not be repaired more cheaply than replaced, etc etc then I would be right with you on the practical front. But it's not the case, most of the time.

I think we owe it to future generations to try and preserve some of the beautiful things we have in the world - I don't necessarily mean subjective beauty, apparent beauty. I'm talking about things that were hard won, made by craftsmen to exacting standards with great skill, from now very rare materials.

Just as we owe it to them to preserve beautiful old paintings and skilled works of art and engineering - cathedrals, (which I don't generally find very attractive apart from their windows) bridges, sculptures, etc etc.

That I believe is an obligation on all of us. As far as we can reasonably manage it. But as I said I am talking from the perspective of someone who has dealt with a lot of damaged dolls and some very lovely, if damaged, 'untouched' ones that haven't had their eyes replaced with modern ones, haven't had a 'repaint', haven't even had their hair washed - they are still beautiful, to my eyes, because they are genuine and they tell a story. They are also often the most valuable in monetary terms, the more original they are - a doll from certain manufacturers with its horse or human hair wig, tangled and threadbare, is worth thousands, while a doll from the same company that's had new eyes and a nylon wig stuck on goes for a lot less.