Following up on a previous thread i’m about to replace heavily rotten sashes with plastic (I know) and have had two quotes:

1 to leave the original wooden boxes in place and one to remove them and replace the interior wooden trim.

Any advice about what is best?

Get the boxes removed, as they fit a wider sash that way and you get more light. If you keep the old wooden frame then they fit a smaller unit and just screw it into the old wood frame (which carries on rotting).

We had sash uPVC fitted 15 years ago and they’ve been faultless and look excellent.

We left them in as removing would have required re-building the ground floor bay and quite a bit of mess around the upstairs windows to cut them out (and the room had just been replastered…!)

Have had no problems with them and the guys were clued up about how to work around the existing boxes. As with all things window related suspect it will depend upon the quality of the fitters.

Edit: saw post above – our existing boxes were rebated in behind the external leaf of brick so you don’t see any old timber outside and it’s all protected in the wall. (Touch wood…)

have had two quotes:

1 to leave the original wooden boxes in place and one to remove them and replace the interior wooden trim.

What are they replacing the wooden trims with? uPVC?

If it was me, I’d remove the sash boxes and get them to replace the all the interior trim in timber. uPVC internal trims are a bit “social housing” for my tastes.

We left them in as removing would have required re-building the ground floor bay and quite a bit of mess around the upstairs windows to cut them out (and the room had just been replastered…!)

Bad timing re plastering!

Replacing the original sash boxes is a messy job, but they can made good, skim over and fit wooden window ledges etc on the inside.

I don’t see the point in paying all that money for a smaller window which is then screwed into a rotting old sash box. The neighbour did this (student let) and you can still see the old rotting wood frame around the new window. Looks horrible.

If the house is old enough to have sash windows, you might want to make sure the replacements have trickle vents. You could end up with damp problems otherwise.

Second that on trickle vents.

I don’t really see the point of trickle vents on windows which open. Right now most of the windows in the house are left open (all lock in an ajar position), so the whole house will be completely aired by the time we get back from work.

aren’t there some building regs around trickle vents and replacement windows?

I know it was an issue when I replaced a window with a patio door (maybe because doors don’t have an ‘ajar while I’m out the house’ mode)?

I don’t really see the point of trickle vents on windows which open. Right now most of the windows in the house are left open (all lock in an ajar position), so the whole house will be completely aired by the time we get back from work.

How’s that work out for you in December?

How’s that work out for you in December?

Fine, we leave them open during the day all year.

I don’t envy your heating bills.

I don’t envy your heating bills.

Think Gas was £330 last year…

I envy your heating bills.

Moreover,

The boiler in my house is somewhere between 30 and 40 years old, and massively inefficient. I’d replace it in a heartbeat if I could, but the fix is “complete new system” and would run to thousands. If I left the windows open all year round it’d be cheaper to heat the house by burning five pound notes.

this is getting a bit off topic but having to leave all the windows open every day to ‘air the house’ makes it sound like there’s a problem somewhere (although from your heating bills you must live in a hermetically sealed building so maybe that’s it)?

I work at home, I’d freeze if I left the windows open all day.

We adjust the amount of window opening based on the wind, if it’s till they get more, if it’s windy less as the main point is to completely change the air in the house to get rid of sweaty body smells and last night’s cooking smells, cat vomit smells etc.

The whole trickle vent thing seems to be based on the premise that no one ever opens a window, which I don’t really get.

15 love, 15 all, 30-15, 30 all, 40-30, deuce, advantage Cougar 🙂

Another vote for digging out the sash boxes, big job though. Finding big architraves for making good can be hard too, when we did ours about 12 years ago Arnold Laver still did 4″ architrave from stock, but we still ended up with a few custom bits and a load of router work. Our sliding sashes had already been removed, but the boxes left in and 70s aluminium frames wedged in. We put in Quickslide upvc sash windows and they’ve been super, but I think there are a few others around now. With a sash restrictor you can open top and bottom by a couple of inches and still be secure which is great for ventilation.

I can tell you about my experience. We replaced ours with wood. It wasn’t massively expensive as we found a building company who sub contracted out to a joiner. Really happy with the results but we did pay just under £1000 per window!

Words of caution – our were original, when they came out so did a huge amount of plaster, a few bricks and in one case a rotten lintel (how we laughed!) IT turns out the windows had become integral to the structure and we unsettled it removing them. Nothing that couldn’t be fixed but it took longer and cost more and created more mess.

Have a contingency in mind for when you find things during the work.

If your house is old you might also find that the wooden structure of the sash is holding things around it together. If you replace with plastic – will these be able to support what is around without issue. IF your wood is rotten, why is this – what state are the lintels in?

Some companies do refurbs, our neighbours did that and the results are really good, they replaced rotten wood, repaired the sashes so they worked and repainted. Think it was about £300 per window.

Can recommend some people if you are in Newcastle.

we used stock architrave it was cheaper to replace all of it than salvage what we could and get copies made.

We lost some cornicing as well. Ornate Victorian stuff. Thankfully our plasterer was a bit of a fanatic so he “just” hand moulded some in situ to repair the damage. Several meters – you can’t tell as he even put in just enough defects so it didn’t stand out as brand new.

If your house is old you might also find that the wooden structure of the sash is holding things around it together

They normally are, but you can just replace with wooden frame, think Anglian built a 3″ post frame to support our bay window IIRC.

We replaced ours with wood. It wasn’t massively expensive as we found a building company who sub contracted out to a joiner. Really happy with the results but we did pay just under £1000 per window!

My brother has just had this done for his house in Cambridge. Can’t say I’m that impressed by them – they’re less secure than the our PVC variant and much lighter – so sound proofing is no where near as good. I actually prefer the PVC (which is not something I’d have expected to say).

The wooden ones will still need painting every few years as modern lead free gloss paints are crap compared with proper toxic ones and they’re made of soft wood, so will rot if not looked after.

Just to take this slightly off topic, our Victorian 2 up 2 down semi d used to have sashes. They were all completely replaced with different style upvc windows some point 18+ years ago and it would nice to get sash replacements.

Lounge is a bay window. Any ideas on what this would cost?

Was £800 per sash 15 years ago when we had ours done (and sash uPVC were state of the art new things). I’d expect them to be much cheaper now (although labour will have gone up).

My brother has just had this done for his house in Cambridge. Can’t say I’m that impressed by them – they’re less secure than the our PVC variant and much lighter – so sound proofing is no where near as good. I actually prefer the PVC (which is not something I’d have expected to say).

The wooden ones will still need painting every few years as modern lead free gloss paints are crap compared with proper toxic ones and they’re made of soft wood, so will rot if not looked after.

Ours were pretreated conditioned hardwood which we specified ourselves based on research

Modern paints are fine you just need to pick the right ones. The lead part had little to do with durability that is more resin/pigment choice. It was a cheap way of making paint white. Ours look as new and have been in 4 years. They haven’t visually yellowed and there is no sign of paint deterioration. I asked the joiners to paint them as they were able to break down the windows and spray them in a proper booth with proper equipment – that opens up a greater range of higher performing paint.

It is not impossible to get white gloss paints with greater than 25 years durability. Expensive mind, you are normally looking at polysiloxane tech with some expensive pigmentation (No barytes or chalk filler!)