Replacing the dreaded placcy!

[jocelyn plummer]

Hi Everybody,

Yes, I am still alive and have been keeping an eye on you all. Life has been dominated by getting sold, dragging painfully slowly towards exchange. This has been on going since January, same buyer, progress punctuated by his thorough requirements!
Our second challenge has been trying to find a suitable property, keeping an open mind about what is on offer in our price bracket.

We have identified an 1870/80 build, one in a row of previously estate workers cottages. Quite nice, bit quirky but charming in many respects. BUT every window is UPVC, installed 5 years ago. GHASTLY, our nostrils were filled with the aroma for several hours afterwards. UGH

So, I am thinking about the cost of replacing them with up to the minute wooden ones. I sort of thought that a ball park figure would be £500 to make, plus VAT, plus installation , around £800 each?

Obviously it all depends on the window sizes etc, haven't got a piccy only the Agents details, but could send by PM if somebody like Biff can give me a better guesstimate.

As there are 8 plus a double door to replace I wondered if I should focus on replacing only some of them,where the fumes won't matter quite so much, maybe the 3 bedrooms, the bathroom and the living room and leave the rest.

Fortunately the floors are still the original wooden ones (pine the vendor thought) and there is one open fireplace left, the others having been removed and bricked up, so we can get more air flowing around the place in due course.

Also what is this LPG fuel, is it reasonably competative. I gather it is delivered regularly according to needs.

Oh how I wish our budget would stretch to a cool Georgian, no fuss, no hassle, NO PLACCY house, but I am looking forward to having another go at getting a house back to life.

xxxxx

 

[Penners]

Hello Joss - glad you're still making progress, albeit slow.

I've had several new softwood windows made over the last couple of years. A typical price for a window 1200mm wide x 850mm high, with three sashes - the two outer ones hinged and the centre one fixed - and a single 20mm thick horizontal glazing bar across each sash, was about £350 plus VAT. This did not include glazing, and the window was designed for single glazing only. Supplied, not fitted.

I hope that's some help. If others post some prices too, you should be able to get a feel for the market.

 

[biffvernon]

And for a window 1200mm wide x 850mm high, with three sashes - the two outer ones hinged and the centre one fixed made of oak with double glazed units fitted, I might charge about £800 including everything, supplied not fitted.

 

[jocelyn plummer]

Thank you both! That is most helpful.

Glad I have not lost my sense of reality whilst being away in the Holy land.....!

 

[FamilyWiggs]

I just replaced a couple of 'orrible modern windows with lovely reclaimed pitch pine, with sliding Yorkshire sashes, 8 panes of single-glazing per sash for £800 plus VAT - supplied & fitted.

Wrong area for you, but http://www.period-property-solutions.co.uk were the firm. Highly recommended.

 

[FamilyWiggs]

I meant 4 panes per sash, 8 in total.

Pic of ongoing works here, you can see the window - sort of!

http://www.period-property-solutions.co.uk/Portals/0/LiveContent/441/Images/P1000305.JPG NB - takes a wee while to load.

 

[jocelyn plummer]

Thank you again. An interesting company. I am sure that I can find a similar one in our chosen area.

 

[biffvernon]

That's lovely, FamilyWiggs

 

[Penners]

takes a wee while to load.

Absolutely correct. I went for a wee, and when I came back it had loaded.

 

[FamilyWiggs]

Thanks Biff - I'm so excited at how it is all turning out. Lime plaster is drying nicely, and I spent a very pleasant (not) day grouting the Heather Browns in the dining room. If the sockets & switches would hurry up and arrive, my joy would be almost complete. :lol:

 

[FamilyWiggs]

Thank you again. An interesting company. I am sure that I can find a similar one in our chosen area.

.

It's a great little company. We're very pleased with their work (they done structural joinery, masonry and lime plastering for us, and they're really nice guys. We had to wait a while for them, but I'd recommend them to anyone.

Best of all they are happy with me mucking in and having a go!

 

[FamilyWiggs]

Sorry - "They've done" :roll:

Robin

 

[Flyfisher]

Thank you again. An interesting company. I am sure that I can find a similar one in our chosen area.

You don't say where your chosen area is but if it's still in Norfolk then it might be worth contacting Rolfe Joinery (http://www.applegate.co.uk/company/12/07/340.htm). They've supplied windows to our (and our CO's) complete satisfaction.

 

[SD]

I got three quotes to replace ALL the windows in my house and was walking around in shock for a week. All quotes came it at roughly the same cost. For double glazed, softwood, flush casement with mainly 1 horizontal bar, three sashes, one of them fixed. Smallest window 450x900, largest window 1200x1450, 10 windows altogether, came out at £9,500!! I could extend my kitchen for that! Thats nearly £1000 a window! (obviously the shock still hasn't worn off) . Oh-the price includes fitting. If the windows were standard sized it would cost about half that. Which brings me to the question. Is it really difficult to fit windows. Could we do a DIY job? At £3000 for fitting I'm really tempted. Any advice from the expert Carpenters?
Stephanie

 

[FamilyWiggs]

SD - that does sound expensive to me...

As for fitting, I haven't done it myself, but have seen the two windows made for me fitted recently, and there doesn't seem to be much to it. If you can manage to get it square/level and there is no masonry work to be done, then I guess it depends upon your view of expanding foam.

Personally I have become reconciled to its limited use, but can see that others may be less enamoured of it - either on environmental grounds, more "purist" grounds that it is not "traditional" or simply because they like to go to work without bits of sticky black grime where their fingerprints once were.

 

[biffvernon]

Fitting windows is not difficult - taking the old one out is usually the hardest part.
I prefer to use wooden wedges rather than expanding foam I worry that the foam may not be so strong in a hundred years.

 

[Nemesis]

I was going to post and say if Biff can do it anyone can - but you have it from the horse's mouth...

I'd avoid the foam.

 

[shelli]

Also what is this LPG fuel, is it reasonably competative. I gather it is delivered regularly according to needs.

Liquid Propane Gas - sits in a big ugly tank in your garden and is charged at approx 36.6p per litre plus VAT at 5% - our tank holds approx 900 litres so costs about 350 quid to fill it up - prices at this end of the fuel market can change quickly as you are dealing with fast supply chain - often, if the price is in flux, our supplier can't tell us the cost per litre even the day before he delivers it.

I can't help you with accurate running costs for LPG as we are renovating our house and have been variously heating and cooling an un-insulated house, house without roof, house without windows, house with big holes in masonry etc.

Ours is a big place (i think we've got 22 rads) - we will have an open fire in the lounge (one end of building) and 8Kw multi fuel stove in inglenook fireplace (at the other end of building) which, now we are fully insulated, should eliminate the need for 6 of the rads. The lofts are insulated and shouldn't take much heating which means another 4 rads can be off mostly. This will hopefully reduce our need for Gas considerably.

I would be a happy girl if we only had to fill tank up once a year.

Shelli

 

[jocelyn plummer]

Ouch Shelli, thanks for the info about LPG!

 

[MdB]

We were going through approx 1500 to 2000 litres of LPG per winter to heat our poorly insulated 4 bed house. It had about 12 radiators in the house but should have had around 18 as the heating system was underpowered. We are now replacing it all with a heat pump and a lot of insulation but I did look into all the options a while back. My conclusion was that mains gas is the best if you can get hold of it. Oil and LPG are roughly the same though LPG is more expensive currently.