The property
Clients Hugh and Kiki’s home is a four-bedroom house, around 200 years old, in St Neot, Cornwall. They had CosyGlazing installed throughout by Mitchell & Dickinson. Hugh explains their original problem, the solution devised and installed by Mitchell & Dickinson, and the resulting effect it has had on their home, and their lives.
The problem
‘Our oil-fired central heating boiler was on its last legs, so we decided to replace it with a ground source heating system. In so doing, we realised that we needed to address the heat being lost through our single glazed doors and windows.
The property has around 18 casement windows, a couple of sash windows and some glazed doors. All of them were single glazed with wooden frames. We think they were probably updated in the early 2000’s and we had them repainted around 10 years ago when we bought the house, so they were in pretty good condition.
Our home isn’t listed so we’d initially intended to replace the single panes of glass with double-glazing fitted into the same wooden frames. However, it soon became clear that this wouldn’t be possible, and we’d have to remove and replace the entire window units if we wanted double-glazing. They were in perfectly good order so this would have been both expensive and unnecessary.
It was at this point that we were recommended to contact Mitchell & Dickinson about their secondary glazing system, CosyGlazing, because it was visually unintrusive and we could still open the windows. We were impressed by the consultation and decided to commission Mitchell & Dickinson to fit their secondary glazing to the windows and doors.’
The solution
‘We were particularly attracted to CosyGlazing because there was an option of having a white surround, or a surround that could be painted and tailored to your décor. Our colour scheme features lots of Farrow & Ball colours, which wouldn’t have looked right with the white surround, so we went for the paintable option.
There was one issue that arose immediately prior to the installation: the air vents in some of our window frames presented an issue with the CosyGlazing fitting, but Mitchell & Dickinson worked closely with us to come up with a solution that involved tailoring the product slightly and adding new vents elsewhere, on doors for example, to ensure that we maintained adequate airflow in the house.’
The result
‘It’s quite an invasion having this type of work done, particularly when it involves almost all of the windows and doors, as you have people coming into every room. But the Mitchell & Dickinson team were absolutely fantastic, very nice indeed.
We’d certainly recommend CosyGlazing to other people who are unable or unwilling to install double-glazing for whatever reason. Our windows aren’t features, as such, but we had family and friends over and they didn’t even notice that we’d had secondary glazing fitted, which should reassure people with beautiful feature windows.
With the ground source heat pump installed and the secondary glazing on the windows and doors, we now heat the whole house rather than just the few rooms we spend the most time in, which is much better for the property as it stays consistently warm. We’re pleased to have made our home more energy efficient and helped to ensure we stay nice and warm as we get older.’
