Irish say no to PVC windows

Re: This thread

Bitasean, glad you like the stuff that’s being posted; – there’s more where that came from.

Re: Connolly Entrance

Graham, although I remember going up that escalator entrance off the street many times, I don’t remember noting the lamps or stair railings.
Have to say I always found that entrance to Connolly a bit depressing, and overall I find the new arrangement better, esp. the way it interconnects the areas east and west of the Station. Though, true, the underpass walkway is a bit bleak.

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This is not a ‘Before & After’ but an ‘In Progress’ – The building is a well known pub at Leonard’s Corner (from which the pub takes its name), at Clanbrassil Street Upr. / SCR. Some of you may remember, about 4 or 5 years ago, the pub had a makeover as a ‘Café Bar’. It was quite a tasteful job, with a simple interior and pubfront. The sash windows, quoins and parapet were painted cream, and I think the brickwork was carefully repointed too. All in all a nice job, maintaining the architectural character of the building (doesn’t happen too often with pub makeovers!).
But suddenly, about a year ago, this happened. The original sashes were replaced by double-glazed timber swing-open mock-sashes. The remaining real sashes you can see here had about another hour to go in the building 🙁 . I think the upstairs was being fitted out as apartments at the time. Again, an inner, insulating window, or the draghtproofing of the originals should have been the option.

And, as before, the building was not listed, so nothing could be done.

Nice building – the hood mouldings over the windows are cute. They should have done the decent thing and reinstated correct windows along with the other work.

@Graham Hickey wrote:

What a shame – especially as two-over-twos are quite rare in such quantities and are more elegant (I think) than one-over-ones.

Yes, they were lovely. The (Leonard’s Cnr) pub seems to date to about 1870. Like the Connolly Station windows, these two-over-twos seem to be in the transition between multi-pane Georgian sashes and later single-pane sashes. While major buildings like Connolly availed of larger panes as soon as they were available (mid-19th cen.), it seems the change to larger panes was more gradual in less important buildings (like the pub); – apparently it was still cheaper to make the small panes of glass & use ‘Georgian’ sashes (I imagine the opposite is true today).

The attractive handcut brickwork of the pub soon gave way to the sharp machine cut orange brick ( 🙁 ) which was so ubiquitous right up to the start of the Second World War.

Speaking of the Connolly area, another glaring example of PVC in a prominent building is the fine stucco front of the North Star Hotel directly facing the station. It’s a Protected Structure, so sashes will have to go back sooner or later 🙂 (& a few survive in the ground floor).

That building has been ruined alright between the windows and the Centra shopfront which the pre gunthered picture displays very clearly that the original facade had a lot of character.

An excellent report – though it doesn’t take into account that the newer PVC product coming on the market now seems to be much more durable than that of even five years ago – seemingly having a life far beyond the average of 20 years stated.
And didn’t you youself Monty say that 60 years is now not an unrealistic lifespan for PVC – the very same life as stated for timber in the report?!

One shiver-inducing point made though is particularly pertinent to Ireland – one can only imagine the waste mountain of PVC we’re going to be facing in 20 years+. Literally every single one of the 80% of homes being fitted with PVC in the past goodness knows how many years, and at present, plus 90% all the tens of thousands of houses ‘getting the windows done’ as we speak are going to need their windows replacing at roughly the same time…:eek:
What the heck are we going to do with it all?!

Will regulations have come into effect by then?

The real problem about PVC windows is the price. Nobody prefers them, but the price is so attractive . . . they are really cheap. I was pricing windows for my georgian house they are approx 1.7 metres tall * 1 metre wide. 1 over 1.

For PVC they were EUR 200 each.
For hardwood sash replacements they were EUR 950 each. 😮
Also to get the old windows renovated and fixed up was around EUR 900 each also.

So for my house it was 8k vrs. 1.6k (double glazed)

I’m afraid I sold out – I’m not happy about it. It was a financial decision. Don’t hate us PVC people. 😉

At the time the original windows were installed the timber was slow grown pine. the fast grown pine available today would be too soft. . . . which is why you have to use a hardwood.

I agree that I devalued the house. But only one of the houses on the street has sash windows, so I was just matching the rest of the street. – also I couldn’t afford the sash ones – as mentioned.

😀

Yes, an important distinction to make. Hard deal is still expensive though from what I can make out, well on its way to being as expensive as the hardwoods.

It is the unfortunate reality of timber window-making today Maria (and indeed other timber goods), and it’s only getting worse because of the dominance of PVC: the more people that want plastic, the more timber becomes a pricey niche product.

Personally I’d live with rotting, shaky original sashes any day over PVC, but obviously most people have rather different priorities :).
The fact that you still have your sashes intact Maria is at least some consolation in the replacement dilemma – to restore windows is generally less expensive than total timber replacement, and secondly you have all the original details in situ, from pane arrangements to timber widths to horn design etc – all of which could be a pain to replicate if the sashes were removed some years ago.

At the end of the day it is up to you as to what you want to go for (as to whether this should be the case is another debate :)), and how much you value the architectural merit of the sashes, and their heritage value.
I’ve never had experience of having to restore sashes so can’t quote you – though saying that, PVC and/or aluminium can prove very expensive also, PVC in particular is by no means a cheap option with all suppliers, particularly that wood-grain effect product.

The value of the original glass in the sashes is also something to consider, as is the undoubted appeal of timber as a natural material. I am ever so slightly deeply deeply biased against PVC so really should shut up – but just to say, people, even with all the money in the world, practice such double standards when it comes to windows it just beggars belief – they swoon over cornicing and fire surrounds, but swing pickaxes at original windows.
A serious redressing of the balance is in order in this country.

Deal being a generic term for pine/fir, or rather the actual planks of these woods.
Tons of this was imported into Ireland in the 18th century – in Dublin there used to be a lot of deal yards around the south quays especially, Sir John Rogersons Quay etc, that can be seen on various contemporary maps.

Really though, PVC in this country has got completely out of hand as I experienced first hand over the past week – apologies for the 😡RANT😡 that follows.

Having heard rumours of there being some form of life outside the capital called ‘the rest of the country’ or some such :), I spent 8 days or so travelling around Cork, Kerry and down through the Midlands to get there from Dublin.

At this stage I am not easily shocked when it comes to PVC given what we have on the east coast, and what has been posted here by everyone – but I was genuinely astounded from an ‘outsider’ position at seeing the level of damage PVC is doing in this country – both as a replacement material for original windows in vernacular buildings, and as a modern-day design feature in contemporary structures.

Perhaps what amazed me most of all is the sheer amount of the stuff outside of the Dublin region. In the east a much greater selection is on offer both in design and materials, even if that includes varieties of PVC itself, but in the south and west white PVC is completely dominant to an extraordinary degree. To try and give an idea, counting every single building, new, old and everything in between, I’d say PVC accounts for about 75-80% of all windows in the southwest, with about 10% aluminium and 10%ish 1970s/80s timber and original sash. Modern-day timber is practically non-existent outside of the McDowell-like multi-gabled ranches one sees on occasion. What little is about is usually of very poor quality and design and was chosen as a cheaper option to PVC.

There are some pics to follow, but in terms of older buildings there are 3 main types one most often comes across: 1. tall classical buildings lining country town’s main streets, 2. small higgledy-piggledy vernacular houses and shops making up villages and 3. one-off farmhouses dotted about rural roads and mountains.
My impression of the window make-up of these buildings was:

Tall classical – about 10% have original windows.
Village buildings have about 20-30% depending on the conservation ethos of the community which can be strong in places.
Farmhouses: oh dear, the poor old farmhouses :(… Original windows in the standard classical two-storey, three bay over three bay house are on the verge of being completely wiped out! Out of possibly 100 or more I saw, about three had their sashes in situ!
Indeed the only place where sashes proliferate now in detached houses is in ruined cottages on the sides of mountains – there are plenty of them there! :rolleyes:
Admittedly a lot of the damage was done in the 70s as a lot of these houses have exposed aluminium windows (as per Sinéad’s house on the Edwardian Farmhouse thread), but there’s also a heck of a lot with modern PVC.

There’s some pictures below. Obviously presenting an array of PVCed buildings isn’t an accurate representation of what’s out there (though frankly these don’t even remotely reflect the amount of PVC in the average residential street or estate), so there are also some lovely surviving windows pics to be posted soon too.

The most damaged major town I came across was probably Bandon – PVC and white aluminium literally lines the majority of its grand main street :(. At least some originals survive here:

Mitchelstown is also very bad.

Bantry has been severely hit too – here’s the most prominent building in the town, the Bantry Bay Hotel exposed for the world to see forming a large side of Bantry Square.
It is scandalous that PVC is allowed dominate here:

A distinctive Cork bay window, destroyed with plastic:

An important corner building in Bantry:

A lovely house in Abbeyleix, damaged most of all by a ghastly plastic door:

A lovely landmark curved building in what’s probably Kenmare. The windows are what make this façade, or rather what once made it :(:

And as for this key building in Kinsale – I don’t want to know what is going on with those window openings, one can only image the type of window that once was, not least in the window Aladdin’s Cave that is Kinsale 🙁

It is simply not possible to exaggerate the level of window destruction across the country – it is mind-numbing to see the damage done thus far. There is very simply very little left of our window heritage in the southeast at least, a sad statement of fact.
For an area that is renowned for its wonderful collection of original shopfronts, it is most frustrating to see the conservation ethos end at the ground floor cornice line.

Also in more rural areas I noted quite a few farmhouses seem to be replacing their modernising 70s aluminium frames with PVC – have they not learned from last time round?!

Without doubt the PVC capital of Ireland, if not Western Europe, is Killarney. Hadn’t visited there in about ten years (though even then you could make out what direction it was going). But now I can say that it is officially the naffest, crassest, cheapest, most vulgar place one can imagine.
The amount of sprawling development around the perimeter of the town is as astounding as the monstrousness of the architecture. There is PVC everywhere!
Every last façade, facia and window aperture is clad, supported or stuffed with the muck. It is unbelievable.

I think Killarney really encapsulates the PVC ‘issue’ in Ireland, i.e. just how impressive the PVC marketing machine has been in managing to move into a market and in the space of 15 years completely dominate it, to the point of pushing the alternative to the brink of extinction. It is amazing how ‘a window’ in Ireland is now essentially a PVC frame, rather than timber as once was, or indeed alu-timber, aluminium or steel.

How the market has changed – to the extent that when one goes out to buy windows for a new-build, in 95% of cases it seems nothing else is even considered. How has this extraordinary turnaround happened?
From what I’ve seen, the new-build house market is utterly dominated by PVC in the south and west – easily 95% would be of PVC from what I saw, with a small smattering of white aluminium included in that.

And this has another major consequence too – variety has disappeared. Now the vast majority of all modern windows are not only plastic, but also white.
And the design of windows (ignoring the woeful nature of it by and large) is equally homogeneous – the same plastic grids, the same apertures, the same vertical casement topped with a smaller top-hinged one, the same chunky proportions, the same lack of depth and relief…
Variety has been killed off.

But really, PVC windows in older buildings – very simply they are sketches, outlines, imitations of what used to be there – not real-life frames that contribute to the architecture, but mere drawings, simulations of what once was.
The PVC window frame, and especially the plastic grid, is not just an affront to the dignity of period buildings, but an insult to architecture on a much broader level.

I take some consolation from the fact that PVC hasn’t quite conquered yet as the building on the country’s most south-westerly point on Mizen Head, essentially ‘Ireland’s last building’, has managed to hold onto its lovely sashes :).
Long may they live.

(I’ll give em six months) 🙂

it’s an education issue and Irish people’s lack of visual awareness. The tidytowns never seems to reward conservation, original windows as something to give points to; they just reward hanging baskets. Awareness of pvc and its inappropriateness in historic buildings is high in Dublin but in provincial ireland, pvc is your only man, then again bungalows galore are the order of the day aswell!