UPVC sash windows - insane seeming prices!

[Ilikecakes]

Planning full house refurb and extension in 2024 and trying to sort some of the big ticket items in the next few weeks. The biggest ‘thing’ to buy will be new windows throughout the house, along with four sets of French doors and three sets of bifolds. I’ve had three quotes through and would really appreciate sanity checking from some of the experienced renovation bods on here.

I know these can generate a bit of controversy on here but after MUCH research, we’ve decided on timber-look upvc sash windows for the bulk of the house. We have a really lovely, distinctive heritage property that currently has timber, single glazed sashes throughout (it’s BALTIC in the winter) and restoring, double-glazing and draught proofing them all would be prohibitively expensive and require ongoing expensive maintenance going forward - this from a timber window specialist locally. Back of the house is south facing and, as we’re near the sea, gets a lot of battering over the course of the year with extreme sunlight mixed in with extreme sea gales too. For those reasons, we’d like low maintenance upvc but obviously want to retain the look of the existing sashes as closely as possible, and have accepted basically that we’ll have to pay through the nose for it.

However, I’m still bloody shocked at the three different quotes we’ve had back!! All the quotes seem much higher than expected, but there’s one that’s significantly higher again and I’m struggling to work out if these are fair or if - ultimate first world problem - we’re getting the ‘nice road/house’ tax applied as we’ve annoyingly seemed to find since moving here a few years back.

Three quotes below are for:
27 upvc sash windows (Rose View brand - Ultimate rose collection)
4 timber French doors (across the board we’ve been advised that timber works best for the doors as the upvc frames are too thick for our door dimensions)
Three sets of aluminium bifold (2x3 pane, 1x4 pane)

Quote 1: £99100
Quote 2: £97200
Quote 3: £138000 😱😱 - come to think of it, this last one didn’t even include the French doors as he couldn’t make the timber ones!

For context, the bifolds are roughly £25k out of these figures so windows and French doors are starting at around £75k. Am I going mad that these seem insanely high?! I had an average of £1k per window in mind (none of them are particularly large), but understand that these are high end windows and knew this would creep up, but around £75k?!

I’m going to ring the manufacturers directly tomorrow and try to understand whether I can just order them directly and pay a fitter locally but maybe I’m wrong and this is just what windows like these cost these days?! Would really appreciate any guidance on whether these prices sound out of whack, or whether I’ve just been unrealistic to now?

Gosh that was long, thanks for reading 💐

We have 3G aluminium (windows/french doors/sliders) throughout our home so your quote for uPVC seems tiny in comparison to what we paid.

Have you been to your local builders merchants and asked them to quote? They should have a few suppliers. Also local bench joinery companies who will manufacture the wooden doors for you and probably fit them as well. They will be expensive but bespoke or you can go for something base level from the builder merchants that would be less than £500 a pair.
UPVC windows you should have a few local supplier/manufacturers to ask as well as the national companies.

To get the best price I think you will have to break the job into three parts, 1 billfolds, 2 French doors and 3 windows

Thank you both. @Barnowlsandbluebells that’s interesting as I’d thought aluminium would be slightly cheaper - just anecdotally from friends’ stories. Perhaps the quotes are where they should be after all, but they just seemed eye watering!!

@Autumn1990 all these quotes were from local suppliers rather than large/national firms and I’d assumed that there would be some benefit in quoting from one firm, both for the economies of scale and to ensure a consistent look across the windows and timber doors. I’ll look to get separate quotes for each element. I’ll also ask our builder doing the wider work to get quotes for the window brand that we want.

@Ilikecakes quotes for aluminium can vary a lot according to the quality of the product and spec, but uPVC is often cheaper compared with a good quality aluminium product. Sadly, prices rocketed during the pandemic and have stayed high - it's painful.

We paid 2.5k for one replacement sash window about 8 yrs ago so 1k seems unrealistic for upvc

You’ve got a heck of a lot of windows! My upvc windows have cost about £750-850 each, but they’re not sash. I only have eight windows and two doors 😄

It's the sliding slashes. 😱

We couldn't afford to replace ours so went with regular double glazing here was £500 per 'window' , with two making up a full window. Outer London.

Some places offer financing but the prices are inflated and the only way you can afford is with the financing. It's a con.

Have a look at www.residencecollection.co.uk/ they do some which are specific for older properties, when you say sash do you mean drop down / up sash?

Have you considered secondary glazing although that doesn’t get over the issue of paint work peeling. But some paints are better than others

We did sash only at the front. Is that an option?

We got ours on a supply only basis and got a local builder to install them. It was half the price of any of the supply and fit quotes we had.

We got our windows from Colin's Sash Windows but they were actually made by Quickslide. Excellent quality (we went for all possible upgrades!) and they look fabulous.

It seems a lot, but not outrageously so, to me. It’s been 10 years since we got a quote for replacing the 31 sash and casement windows in the Edwardian house we’d just moved in to, and even then quotes ranged from £45k to £75k excluding any doors or French windows, for a decent heritage range. We couldn’t stomach the cost, particularly as, good though they were, they didn’t look as good as the original wooden ones.

So instead we spent around £20k have the existing refurbished/repaired and draught proofed by a local specialist, but not double glazed, and the difference was amazing. It was never a cold house anyway, but refurbished windows, decent curtains and shutters and we really didn’t notice the lack of double glazing. As a bonus we kept most of the original glass, and though the woodwork needed repainting externally every 5 or 6 years to keep it looking good (£3 or £4k for a decorator) I still think it looks much better than any modern replacements ever would.

I sold the house a few years after my husband died, but even up to then we’d only spent £28k on them, and the EPC when I sold said that double glazing would increase the energy efficiency from a D to a C, and save £160 a year. So a pretty long payback on the additional £30k capital cost…indeed, I bet modern UPVC or aluminium windows will last less than a quarter as long as the wooden ones fitted in 1905 when the house was built!! I also guarantee the lack of double glazing had no negative effect on the sale price, as everyone loved the period features :)

We've just been quoted £1700/window for roseviews, fitted. I think 1k per window is fantasyland thesedays im afraid. Timber ones were virtually double.

I had a sash specialist fixing an issue with our original timber sashes and when chatting he said a rough guide to replace for new sashes were 2 grand a window. Think that was for double glazed UPVC sashes (possibly timber though). So that's 54000 just for your windows plus 25k for the bifolds plus French doors and VAT probably brings it near to £100000.

Really expensive!

We also had all ours refurbished and draught proofed etc when we moved here and they are completely fine. The thing about replacing good timber sashes for double glazing is they only have a shelf life of 20 yrs or so. Our windows are 120 years old! Downside is keeping them painted but it's not the worst.

I could not bring myself to spend that sort of money replacing timber windows with uPVC for what I assume is a period property. Have to agree with @Tryingtokeepgoing - how can it possibly be good value? Can you not stick to getting lovely French doors and bifold (if you must 😁) and get expert renovation including draughtproofing and possibly getting shutters built for the existing windows? It’s got to be better for future value than a house with uPVC, surely? I’d be put off a period property with uPVC windows.

It’ll be interesting to see whether I change my mind on this as I’m midway through buying a listed building which has had new single glazed timber sash windows throughout along with fitted solid wood shutters in most rooms because double glazing wasn’t permitted - I’m assuming it won’t be hideously draughty but perhaps I’ll have a different opinion a few months down the line!

Thanks so much all.

If we had unlimited budget (now and forever!), we’d be replacing all existing with new, timber double glazed sashes and wouldn’t worry at all about the ongoing maintenance costs. As it is, we really can’t just shrug at spending ££££ every few years getting 27 windows and four sets of doors sanded back and repainted - wish we could but it’s just not the case.

As per my OP, I did look at bolstering up the existing windows with draught proofing and extra glazing etc but the cost for doing this was prohibitive (not far off the numbers mentioned to replace with upvc!), and additionally the existing windows have really thick Georgian bars throughout and block out a large amount of light. More modern windows in the same design (whether timber or upvc sash) have much slimmer bars, so this is an additional benefit to replacing rather than restoring. I’d honestly love to work with what we have but the cost of doing it to end up with a less efficient and less aesthetically pleasing result is just impossible to stomach when the numbers are so so large.

Appreciate it’s a massively first world problem but we’re only going to do a refurbishment of this scale once, and need to get it right to get the house warm, well insulated and weatherproofed for the many years we plan to stay. Currently we have black mould appearing on the inside of those south-facing walls, right next to the kids’ beds, each week in winter even with the current windows open for couple of hours each day, and wiping condensation away from windows and walls.

God, I’ve blithered on a lot here but it’s only to demonstrate really that I have done a lot of soul searching (too much!!) in the wood vs plastic here and have made the choice. The brand we’ve chosen are approved for use in listed buildings/conservation areas (we’re neither) so they’re as close as you can get lookwise. Pic below from the company website so you can get an idea of what the windows look like.

As regards price, sounds like it isn’t too outrageous then so thanks all. I’ll still ring manufacturer directly just to triple check and will also look at pricing bifolds (or potentially sliders, not 100%) separately. Just for reassurance, the bifolds/sliders are for two separate very modern looking boxes bolted onto the side of the house. Promise it looks better than it sounds 😂😂

You might find your builder can get a better price. When we had our extension built he used a company which doesn’t supply direct to the public. It was far cheaper than us going to window companies ourselves. We ended up with the ones that heat from the sun in but not out, which for Scotland is ideal! . All were made to measure but not sash and case style.

I've got roseview windows and I agonized over the ultimate Vs the middle of the road one. Ended up with the middle version, they look great and were cheaper. Might be worth asking for prices for those, as it could mean some significant savings. I have no regrets, they looks fabulous

By sash do people mean proper sash windows with the pulley & weights in the frame….or just double glazed windows that slide up and down?
Our windows are the latter….having kittens thinking about the cost to replace!

Ah thank you @LemonFanta1 that’s interesting. Freely admit that I’d leaned straight towards the higher end ones, as directed by the sales guy(!) and hadn’t considered the step down. Will take a look. Do they still have the timber-look butt joints? Does the up/down mechanism work as well?

As I’m on the topic, anyone here have an opinion on my other current obsession please: bloody trickle vents?! We’re looking likely to spend all this money, paying an absolute premium for heritage looking windows only to have to slap dirty, ugly, plastic trickle vent boxes onto them!! Is there any way around this does anyone know? We open windows all year around to keep air circulating, really don’t want to ruin the look (and actually the advanced thermal properties ffs!!) of our windows with sodding trickle vents! Shocked that no companies seem to have come up with an aesthetically pleasing workaround yet……

And before anyone says it: fully aware of the irony of complaining about dirty plastic trickle vents….on a dirty plastic window 😀

27 windows?! When you say house, do you mean mansion?

They don't seem bad quotes for what you're asking for.

That does sound like a high quote ,
A local company replaced ours 18 months ago, 17 windows in all , some of them massive and it was 27 grand . Like you we agonised about replacing original sash windows with pvc but they look fine and the house is so much warmer. The law about trickle vents had only just come in ,we refused to have them which the company was fine with on the understanding that if anyone wanted to come and inspect them we would need to refuse.

So how did you get your FENSA / building regs certificate for the windows?