Retrofitting trickle vents?

[MidnightDexy]

The double glazing in our Edwardian house is pretty shoddy. The noise and thermal insulation are dubious and I believe it is at least 10 years old (the seller said it was fitted in 2007 - i reckon its probably older. There were no FENSA certs).

There are no trickle vents on any of the windows, which i hate. We are out at work all day and do not live in the most salubrious area so we don't feel comfortable leaving even an upstairs window open during the day. The house only really gets a good airing at the weekend.

Our pipe dream is to get double glazed sash windows but for the foreseeable future we have to make do with what we have.

My question is - can you get trickle vents fitted retrospectively? I cannot get a straight answer on the internet. Has anyone had this done, when and roughly how much did it cost?

Thanks in advance

p.s. no known damp issues. Just want to get a little air into the rooms.

Yes

They are just holes, with little plastic covers.

They can be drilled and shaped while the window is being made, or afterwards.

Window enthusiasts like to tell me that nobody but a window specialist should be allowed to drill them, in case they carelessly drill through the glass or metal reinforcement (if fitted)

I am not convinced, but there is sure to be at least one small firm in your town that specialises in mending plastic windows and doors. Beware the big nationals because they need to cover the cost of their helicopters and smarmy salesmen.

Examples

Possibly the maker will provide instructions.

Yes you can usually retrofit, but another option that may be less risky is to get a builder to remove a brick elsewhere in the room and replace with an air brick with a hit and miss slider so you can close it. We used to have that in one of our bedrooms and it ventilated it well, and we fitted a few air bricks ourselves although that was under the floor.

Having said that we didn't get them in our new windows because we live on a noisy road. The old ones didn't have either, but we can lock the new ones on a slightly open setting which we do every day. You can't even tell from outside that they're open unless you know what you're looking for. We will also get a constant ventilation system for the whole house when we get round to it, this will bring in warmed fresh air 24 hours a day hopefully with no pollution!

Yes. Dh has just fitted one into a very ancient timber/leaded light window.

just open windows mornings and evenings.
in other european countries trickle vents are unknown.
they are a bit pointless imo. why put holes that let a draft in into modern insulated window frames?

Because when you want ventilation, you can open them

And when you don't (why not?) you can close them.

When is ventilation a draught?

Thanks i will look into the vents Piglet John, and call around some companies.

Jond2 i don't think an air brick would work as we are a narrow semi and the only place we could put them would be the wall facing the side passage between us and the next semi (about 2 m?) which - to my imagination at least - doesn't get as much through flow of air. I might well be wrong about that though.

Has anyone had this done to a pvc window and might be able to give an idea of cost?

bump to see if anyone has had this done and knows about costs?

Hello I have this same issue with having damp, condensation and mould issues in my property. I didn't have trickle vents in my existing UPVC window so I had a look around and found a company in surrey that installs trickle vents at a very good price. they operate around surrey and across the country.

sms trickle vents i think they were called

The worst think about them is generally they are not well thermally or acoustically insulated. So you have these fantastic well insulated triple glazed windows, that have a freezing sill above them even when the vents are closed because the air from outside freely circulates.

If a trickle vent is to be good IMO, it has to be at least as thermally and acoustically insulating as the double glazed window below. They rarely are.