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 💐

Why don't you contact an expert company to have the sashes refurbished. I've just done that and the result is outstanding.

Also 50% less than UPVC (I checked for comparison but wouldn't do that to a period property.

Probably because the law had literally only just happened .

And you don't have to have them sanded back etc if they're done right.

Then it was mandatory to have them and the only way to get the building regs certificate would have been through fraud.

Agree. You only need to sand back to bare wood if the paint has been compromised, otherwise you just need a stable base. And exterior wood paint should last a decade if applied correctly.

I cant remember what we paid (sliding sash, upvc, north London, 11 years ago) - but i know it felt eye-wateringly expensive, BUT we only had 8 windows! So with your number of windows etc the price will be huge!

'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. '

I'm afraid that the manufacturer's expression: 'approved for use in listed buildings/conservation areas' cannot be the truth. It is not for a manufacturer to decide what is 'approved', it is the planning/conservation department that officially approves. Replacing historic timber windows with plastic isn't allowed for listed buildings. The details are much more chunky. The plastic stays in landfill forever.

Have you looked at it another way, the 'whole house' approach? Look at upgrading your loft insulation and other ways first.

Secondary glazing should be much more affordable.

Hi @Ilikecakesre trickle vents all replacement windows need them now since the most recent building reg change irrespective of if you are replacing windows that had them before or not. I believe there are some uPVC sash windows on market that have a concealed overhead vent system which are a little neater than the stuck on things - not sure about Roseview though. I second the going direct to supplier, I'm an architect and shudder at some of the markups I see from window salespeople! Best of luck

My mother had her wooden sash windows replaced with upvc sash windows on her period property, and they’re very hard to tell apart from the house next door that has wooden sash windows painted white. If you look really closely the vents are probably the giveaway, but they really aren’t obvious. One thing though, a decade on, some of them are a bit draughty again.

And @Calling is right, there's no uvpc window approved for conservation areas - as we learned from our previous flat in a conservation area, only wooden sashes allowed

You can put an electrical positive input ventilation system in the loft and then you don’t have to have trickle vents.

I also think it will be cheaper to rennovate.

And yes, there is no such thing as uPVC being pre-approved for listed buildings.

Thanks all. To my point about approved for conservation areas/listed, I was just talking really to a friend’s experience where she’d successfully argued they could be used and I’ve heard of other examples too - didn’t mean they were blanket pre-approved for use across the board.

I did have a high-level quote to restore our existing windows and it was close to £60k+VAT as I recall and there still was the issue of the ongoing costly maintenance as well as the fat window bars stealing our light. I didn’t dig any further at the time but based on this thread, I emailed a couple of local companies last night to get proper detailed quotes done for repair, so let’s see what they come back with.

On trickle vents, the suppliers I’ve spoken to have said mixed things. Some will install without, self-certify etc for replacement windows, others say they’re 100% mandatory. I’ve also heard one say, as per PP, you can just refuse inspection if FENSA come around (not for building regs which is separate). For any new new windows (ie an extension etc), they’re required - very black and white. Very annoying when I know we get the ventilation we need from just opening the bloody things, it’s not groundbreaking!

I’d also heard of the electrical ventilation option too. As a way to avoid trickle vents it seems
excessive but maybe there’s other benefits too? Does the system cost a lot to run? Is there a constant whirring noise?! In a large property, would I need several boxes dotted about the place?!

Really appreciate those taking the time to reply 💐

We've used Roseview as we are replacing our sash windows. We had wood and decided to put upvc in. We used the ultimate and they are nice windows. We got a quote just before lock down and to replace 26 windows (as the bays count as 3) was £29500. The price has now more than doubled. Due to this we have been replacing them as we can afford them. Nice windows BUT be warned Roseview the company are going through staffing issues and the quality has declined massively and we've had big problems with wrong size windows being delivered, wrong colours, cracked glass....the list of problems endless. It's taken a whole year for them to rectify the issue (and 6 failed attempts).

I would be slightly weary of uvpu white windows on the coast with salt. Also check they have uv rating.
Our neighbours put white aluminium windows in 20 years ago and still all wipe in second and remains white, but they added small extension about 6 years ago and used uvpc white ones as they where cheaper and looked the same, but within a few years the white has gone a yellowish colour. And now they are looking already to replace those windows soon with aluminium like main house. So it wasn’t really a cost saving.

Fyi we have aluminium outside oak inside on 4.5m sliding doors, they were around €12k 5 years ago, and the bi fold doors were coming out at a similar price. So if you have x4 bifold a to replace, even smaller ones, I would think they aren’t going to be that cheap

Also, price wise, can you just replace gradually? We also couldn’t afford all at once. So main front porch and bifolds first, then front windows. And we still have old single pains with single inner extra (all added in 70s) still at the back of house. They need replacing but had to wait. For your house it definitely looks like you could just do front or back first, or large bi folds first and wait 2 years to save in between

We're looking to enlarge and replace a load of windows in our Edwardian house. It's part of a big renovation so we're insulating at the same time. The only way to avoid trickle vents is to ensure ventilation by other means. We're using mechanically ventilated heat recovery.

We're not at a stage where we've got window quotes and reading this is a bit scary. We're in a conservation area so looking at acoya wood sash windows. Does anyone have a ball park figure for these compared to upvc? The window openings will be fairly large.

FWIW our neighbours tried to get those Rose View windows in a listed building in our conservation are and was refused. They had to go wooden anyway - there’s always a giveaway with plastic windows and that’s why the planners often don’t like them in such situations. They’re also terrible at an environment level

I seem to remember that when restoring the sashes we didn't have to pay VAT at 20% but it was something like 5% as it was a restoration.

Seems it is still 5% for a restoration

Just agreeing that 1k a window is not at all realistic for sash. Might still get that for casements but I think you need to double it for quality sash. (Though I'd expect some sort of bulk discount with that many!) .

Also want to agree you definitely want the ones that have the butt joints. Another thing which is a dead give away that they aren't timber is if you have those horn things that come down - make sure they're part of the vertical side bar and not just stuck on afterwards. The ones that are stuck on always show a join mark and look rubbish in comparison.

I had sash windows done about 8 years ago and I think it was about £1800 per window. They looked great though. On a mid terrace house we could compare all the different styles others had chosen and it was worth it to get the most timber-looking possible. (Well, whether the cost is actually 'worth it' is an individuals opinion of course, but I mean that you could definitely see the difference in what you paid for).

We're having 20 sash windows, including 8 swept heads, + 3 bespoke casements replaced with identical proper accoya wood double-glazed with argon gas for £45k.

www.bristolsashwindowcompany.com/

I was also told 1k per window but they may not have been as fancy as yours.

I think it is very sad that you are putting UPVC into a heritage property. I did all the windows in my house about a year ago at a cost of around £50,000 but it was half the number of windows you have. Mine were hardwood double glazed.

Oh gosh, I really don’t mean this rudely but the head tilting ‘I think it’s very sad’ type comments about wood vs upvc are quite infuriating, and not the point of the thread. I have already said that in an ideal world I’d love to either restore or replace with wood but the ongoing maintenance cost is really daunting. It’s pretty arrogant to just assume that everyone can suck up the thousands it costs to get that many wooden windows sanded/painted/whatever every few years. I’m not pleading poverty for a second, but we managed to pull a deposit together to buy our house, we’ve now scrimped like mad, working jobs we really don’t like, in order to pull a sum together to refurb it and the hope now is that once the big work is done, the house will need minimal ‘big’ maintenance going forward and we can actually plan to go on holiday or help the kids with driving lessons in the future, rather than earmark £Xk every few years to get windows sorted!

I did actually speak again with a local sash restorer this morning who remembered our conversation 12ish months ago, and who’s going to visit us in the new year for a full survey but even on the phone, he said we’d be looking at £60k+ to restore (or replace the most rotten ones). I’ll see what the final quote looks like after his visit but we want the house warm, dry, draught-free and more liveable than it is now. I’m also concerned about several comments I’ve read here and on builders’ forums etc about the quality of wood used for new windows these days and how many have spent a fortune on wood only to have to replace them 10 years down the line…..not exactly environmentally sound either.

Thanks for all the helpful advice both about this and about tricky vents! I can’t bore friends with this chat in real life, so great to get the lowdown on here 😂

This is super helpful thank you. I might give them a call and see if they know anyone locally to me….

Sorry, edited to say this was in response to PP who recommended the Bristol company.