Velfac or other bi parting sliding doors

[Gizmojo]

Hi
Does anyone have these and if so would you be prepared to tell me what you paid for them and what size? Just trying to work out if they’re even feasible on our budget without getting salesmen in! Thanks in advance :)

We have 5 metre anthracite grey aluminium bi folds from a company called Real Frame. We got ours cheap at £3200 as OH has his own building company so places a lot of orders with them. You should allow approx £1000 per door.

We got ours from the Aluminium Frame Company in Leeds. They manufacture the doors and have their own showroom so were a lot cheaper than other companies around. I can’t remember what we paid as it was all in the kitchen cost (£16k) which included knocking down the wall between kitchen and dining room, kitchen from diy kitchens (who I would also recommend) granite worktop, all new appliances and karndean flood throughout downstairs. We didn’t scrip anywhere just sourced it well 😀 I didn’t think we could afford the bifold doors until we came across this company.

Hi
It all depends on the width, and if you have a fitter / know anyone handy. If you have someone who can install them (its pretty straightforward - lots of guides on youtube etc. and no expensive specialist tools needed other than drills and a level) the cheapest way to go about it is to buy them supply-only online or from a local factory, then pay the fitter. This way, you’ll cut out the mark-up companies have to charge in order to be profitable.
Velfac are fab, but you will pay alot for them. If you plan to stay in the house for a long time, its nice to have nice things.
If you’re trying to make it as nice as possible whilst trying to stay frugal and not get carried away, smarts or aluk are great bang-for-your buck aluminium bifold brands, Origin are a bit better and 20year guarantees (and a little bit pricier) or if you want large panes of glass sliding doors, Reynaers sliding doors are fab and dont cost the earth.
We’re definitely seeing a trend with architects moving back towards large sliding doors with big panes of glass.
We run an installation company in Wales so we’ve had a bit of experience, hence the essay! Good luck with it, hope this is helpful

We went for the single sliding rather than bi parting because the faff opening them is lower, and we could tweak the sizes of the fixed panel to bring the overall size within the limits.
There are no sales people really, i just got a quote,i think it's mostly designed for big council projects and self builders rather than home owners so they don't bother with the hard sell.
Having said that we did get them to do triple glazing for the price of double, and the fitting is done separately but either way it's simple.
I think it worked out less than half the price of bi folds for the 4.8m by 2.4m opening but that included a fixed panel and swing door to make up the width. The actual slider is about 1.3m and a matching 1.3 for it to slide over beside.

We got sliders from ID systems and windows from Velfac. The Velfac order was quite stressful as we had to measure up ourselves and measurements had to be correct to the mm. Might be worth checking if this is also the case for their doors. With ID systems, the company came to measure up.

Also, if you do go with Velfac, make sure you haggle. You will probably get a discount.

Thanks very much for all the answers! It’s a 4m opening, just not sure about bifolds as it would leave us with the door sticking out into the patio, which I can see our rather accident-prone little one running into! In general, are sliding doors more or less expensive than bifold at that size, @Benny40s ?

A slider would most likely be a little bit dearer, but you would keep the price down if you chose to have 1 panel fixed, with 1 sliding (instead of both sliding).
We are install-only, but there will be online companies you can go to for prices (there are probably threads on here with suggestions!) I know ID systems mentioned above have a good reputation (not sure if they do supply-only) and i've seen a company on here called Lumina Design getting favourable mentions for roof lanterns, i'd expect they do sliding doors also (they do bifolds)

That’s great, thank you :)

Regarding cost, the reason we went with a four panel with 1 fixed 1 sliding 1 fixed 1 swing door was due to the cost being significantly cheaper, also the stresses in bi folds are higher so they don't last as long whereas the velfac are expected to last a lot longer. We did go for the maximum dimensions for a triple glazed slider and it's still got the full guarantee.

Oh and with the measuring, if you find the installer first they will do the measuring for you, so you don't have the worry of miss measuring.