Fitting air trickle vents on existing pic window?

[jjkpwxx]

Has anyone done this? How easy would it be and who would I need to hire to fit them? As it’s either this or new windows as the house we’ve just brought has condensation issues.

PVC windows *

Ask around for the local window repairperson. There will be at least one, because plastic windows and doors often go wrong. It is usually easy.

You want someone who has been trading for some years, and has a good reputation with a real-world local address. Your windowcleaner may know one.

Note that websites where traders pay to be listed, and can remove uncomplementary reviews, are advertising sites, not recommendation sites.

Just get a dehumidifier. Ours is on the landing and runs overnight, as long as all bedroom doors are ajar it condenses approx 2L water every night, windows are dry every morning

Fresh air is free.

Just be aware that your window will always let noise in once you put a vent in it. I would agree with the person suggesting a dehumidifier instead.

What’s the cause of the condensation? Do you live in an old property?

I had this done in my bedroom window when we had a couple of the other windows replaced. The window company did it and I think it might have been free since we were also buying windows, so I can’t imagine it would be expensive to get done. Previously we had issues with condensation building up overnight which has been resolved by the trickle vent. Definitely worth doing if the windows are otherwise ok.

@vetprob not true that it always lets in noise. You can close trickle vents and they are very small in any case. A dehumidifier is far too loud for a bedroom while you’re trying to sleep, but I don’t find that the case for an open trickle vent even though we live next to a railway line.

@yonem you can turn the machine off at night. I worked for a ventilation company and it's well known in the industry that sound ingress is a major downside of these vents. They also get mucky over time and are difficult to clean.

They do the same thing as having it open a crack.

Are you in a bungalow/ground floor flat/msusinette? Why not just have the windows open a crack?

If you have a condensation problem in a bedroom then turning the dehumidifier off at night won’t help, because bedroom condensation primarily builds up at night while the room is occupied. Like I said, I live in a noisy area and have not noticed any difference in noise from having the trickle vent installed - it’s very different to having the window open in that respect. As for cleaning, no worse than cleaning the window tracks. They are a standard part of most modern windows.

There are people who have an innate dislike of ventilation, and people who haven't.

Can you guess which group suffers more often from condensation, damp and mould?

You have the dehumidifier on during the day to lower the humidity, then even though it builds back up again at night it doesn't cause as much of a problem.

Plus if it runs during the day if it is a compressor type it will be more efficient at getting rid of water as the temperature will be higher.

The most efficient way though to lower humidity is to get rid of high humidity air that is produced in the first place. You can do this with extractor fans over cookers and in bathrooms which are a big source of humid air.

The final point is not to generate excess humidity. Put lids on pans when you boil them. Wipe down shower surfaces after use with a squeege to remove water than ends up drying into the air. Don't dry huge amounts of clothes over radiators (it's kind of obvious where the water goes).

In bedrooms the humidity is produced by people breathing it out all night, and you can’t do anything to change that!

Trickle vents are much cheaper than dehumidifiers and a completely normal part of most windows installed in the last decade.

No but you can start from a lower base humidity.

If the humidity is 40% when you go to bed it might climb to 60% by the morning.

If it is 60% it might climb to 80%.

But the lower the starting humidity, the less likely you are to get condensation.

I'm not sure trickle vents work out that much cheaper if you have to spend ££K replacing windows in order to get them. Or at least, the payback time may be many many years vs the cost of the dehumidifier and the price of the electricity used.

We had this done and it sorted out a damp issue be had, the people we bought some new windows off were happy to do and it was reasonable.

You don’t need to replace windows to get them. I had one cut into my existing bedroom window. I had a window company in replacing a window in a different room and they did it for free while they were here. It didn’t take very long. I imagine getting the whole house done would be less than the cost of a dehumidifier.

@GasPanic
"I'm not sure trickle vents work out that much cheaper if you have to spend ££K replacing windows in order to get them."

You don't have to.

It won't cost less. At least it won't if you get someone in to do it properly.

Drilling holes in perfectly good windows is silly because there is no way you are going to get a good thermally and acoustically optimised solution which allows the necessary airflow which needs to be designed in from the start. And that is assuming the windows can even take being drilled.

You might as well open the window a crack overnight. For free. Without risking wrecking your windows.

I’m not a fan of trickle vents. Constant low level noise and draught.

Why not open your windows every day twice a day for 20 minutes - do it while you get ready in the morning say, and same in the evening - and then shut them afterwards? Or do you do this already and it’s not enough?

Ours were done in 30mins! Really simple

For anyone who doesn't know

Plastic windows are assembled from standard plastic mouldings. You cut a top, a bottom, two sides, and put them together with reinforcing corners.

If the customer is having trickle vents, you cut a slot in the top piece, and screw a plastic cover on the inside and the outside.

As long as you know where the glass is, so you don't drill into it, it is not exactly a complex task requiring many years of trainjng, skilled craftsmanship and precision engineering. You could get a job in a window factory and be churning them out in half a day.

It will work with any UPVC window, they just drill through the UPVC and it is quite a small area they have to cut. Here’s a photo of the one I had retrofitted. You’d never know it wasn’t original from looking at it, it looks the same as the newer windows which came with them by default. It’s open in the picture but just flicks closed. We can’t sleep with the windows open due to noise from outside, which isn’t so audible with the windows closed but vent open.

Agree with this. Additionally, once you have a vent installed you can never replace that window without a similar vent due to building regs.