GrahamH
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A very good page Andrew thanks, though a bit more balance would be welcome in favour of PVC dare I say – accuracy is everything with such comparisons.
There is no doubting the low-maintenance appeal of the product – this is at the end of the day what the vast majority of its market wants it for.The site makes a very good point when stating ‘the average house changes hands every 7-10 years’ – at present this is why the negative aspects of PVC are remaining hidden for the moment, simply because very few people have yet to live in a house long enough to experience the plastic’s twilight years!
You move into a shiny new first-time development with new PVCs, then move on to a second hand house that’s just ‘had the windows done’, and third time round move to a house with 70s timber or something that needs replacing and so more new PVC goes in. The nasty hidden side of the product will only hit home in 10/20 years time.Some of the truly astounding misinformation that’s on the internet here from a page entitled:
“What are the advantages of Vinyl Windows?”
“One of the well-known advantages of vinyl windows is their superb degree of insulation. When compared with aluminum window frames, vinyl keeps in heat during winter but seals your rooms from heat during summer.”
(Fails to mention timber is equally effective)“Even if you spend money to replace your existing windows with vinyl, you can likely make up this cost in energy bills in a few years. When paired with double-paned glass, the costs could be significant. The windows are even recyclable for those who are concerned about the environmental impact of construction waste.”
(Oh please – and who exactly recycles these yokes? The majority go straight to landfill)(I love this one below)
“They are inexpensive to manufacture and install, since they fit into the existing spaces for your windows without changing your walls.” (!!!)
(But of course – you have to demolish half your house to install timber :rolleyes: )(And this)
“You can choose how many panes your windows have, how they open, the width of the sill or trim, and their locking mechanism.”
(All impossible with other products I’m sure)(This below is just unbelievable)
“Vinyl windows resist dirt, stains, mold, scratches, and dents. The exterior casing won’t fade or wear under ultraviolet sunlight. This means vinyl windows will last far longer than aluminum or wood.”
(Very simply patently untrue)Good luck with your windows Maria 🙂
So you’ve been doing it for some time then I presume considering some of those mentioned date from the late 80s?
Do you work for DCC Public Lighting Division or are you contracted out can I ask?I’m a big fan of your Castle lanterns – these I presume are the copper lamps mounted on older standards in the Upper Yard?
What do you think about constantly replicating Dublin’s trademark silver column in so many places round the city?
(sorry about the twenty questions :o)@Maria wrote:
I would put a photo of my terrace on here to show the awful things people have done to these beautiful houses but I think it would upset too many people. 🙁
Your neighbours or people here? I wonder… 😉
As for keeping the glass, there’s little reason why you shouldn’t be able to. Indeed the restoration of windows often only needs the years of paint stripped back and the odd timber or two replaced, especially the bottom rails of sashes which can be dodgy due to water accumulation.
But by and large you should be able to retain the majority of the original sashes themselves, let alone just the glass!Most certainly – just that the building would have had a much greater apparent value with original windows and, well, wouldn’t have been so horribly ugly to look at when considering its fate.
Perhaps it’s naive to think that the discriminating heads in APB didn’t factor this into consideration, but you’d wonder all the same.
That’s an interesting idea Kefu about going as far as North Grafton St, allowing commuters to avoid the congested Grafton St (esp in the mornings with all the deliveries) whilst bringing you that bit closer to the Red Line if desired.
Of course this would never pass as a proposal though, as the appeal of a ‘link’ has to be there, even if in reality the RPA’s favoured O’Cll Bridge proposal may very well not physically link either.
That Matt Talbot/Pearse/Connolly scheme has always been a favourite for me also Stephen, though how this ties in with the greater rail plan for Dublin I’m not sure. It it is compatible, I’d jump at it.
Really the more you think about it, the more it seems the ABP decision may have been very different had that facade its original windows intact.
Yikes – it’s huge! 🙂
No doubt of great appeal to whoever snaps up Findlater House next – a very valuable relic from the car-happy age. What a waste of city centre space.
As for the Deane building – have to emphasise that it seems to have been blown up afterwards. The film was grainy but I’d be 99% sure it was deliberate as it all seemed very controlled, not least as there was a camera set up in the centre of O’Connell St directed at that building at that moment, and which I very much doubt was done with bullets and shells flying about overhead 🙂
Yes, and interesting details about the Westland Row bridge creating eh ‘difficulties’ for fitting a Luas underneath…
Here’s a pic that’s been kicking about for a while – does anyone know if the brickwork of Frazer’s on Upper O’Cll St is original or just pastiche? The facade is made up of two merged properties that from a distance look whole.
But as can be seen below, the left-hand section has clearly modern brickwork while the right-hand two-bay section has a pre-1940s formation, and a crumbly old appearance too.
The very top of the uppermost floor appears to have been rebuilt recently.
Anyone know what was here before Frazer’s moved in?
And considering we’ve never had any pics of this terrace between 1922 to c1960 posted here, does anyone know if this terrace was even damaged in 1922? (save the corners which appear to have been rebuilt)And just on 1922, I saw archive footage during the week of Deane’s fairytale building being blown up after 1922. It seems to have survived the events themselves but was subsequently demolished due to irreversible damage – there was a slight upward blast and then the upper floors all came showering down into the street 🙁
@Devin wrote:
That really is the case though. In the more developed east you’re used to seeing the mistakes made in the 70s and 80s with aluminium, cheap timber and early PVC – you gloss over it as you do with much of the inappropriate development from these times.
But when you see tons, literally tons of plastic being installed post 1995, i.e. in the past ten years across the western side of the country, the mind boggles as to the ignorance of local authorities, property owners and the planning system as a whole.
Other European countries like Sweden seem to have put legislative safeguards in place in the 1970s, while even today in this country we still can’t control what’s happening to older stock.I’ve said it before, but what is the Dept of Education doing about the hundreds of schools around the country replacing sash windows with PVC? They have a direct role to play here in safeguarding architecturally worthy school buildings, and in being environmentally pro-active. The scourge of PVC in 1890s-1940s school buildings is one of the worst aspects of the plastic invasion. Suppose you really cannot blame schools for wanting comparitively maintenance-free frames considering their often shoe-string budgets, but PVC’s use in schools is particularly inappropriate given the wear and tear they recieve and the difficultly in repair.
Regarding the Tidy Towns, they do have this to say in their information pack:
“The major threat to the overall architectural character of a town or village isn’t necessarily from large one-off developments, but through the day-to-day activities of property owners and occupiers. Try and avoid these potential causes for damage:
. The replacement of timber windows by P.V.C, particularly in historic buildings
. The use of varnished timber instead of paint
. Removal of the traditional plaster finish and pointing-up the stone or brickwork behind – this destroys local traditions and can cause long term damage to the fabric of the building
. Installing “pseudo traditional type shopfronts” which ignore local context and characteristics
. Removal of old boundary walls and outbuildings.”I think a little stronger language is in order than ‘try to avoid’ :rolleyes:
The Tidy Towns has a mahor role to play also in protecting older buildings from PVC – conservation is a heck of a lot more than window boxes, heritage lanterns and parish pumps surrounded by geraniums.I think their concern for the problem is summed up perfectly by their current billboard campaign – think it’s the one with a guy with paint all over his face and a whitewashed cottage in the background. And what’s that inserted into the window aperture?……
…whereas now they have no view, are sited in the shade, and have pedestrians mushing past on busy afternoons.
Those pictures are fantastic Devin – allbeit for the wrong reasons!
The present day situation is unbelieveable!What’s a bit evident there and has annoyed me since the kiosks went in is the dead space between them – completely useless, and a shameful waste of valuable pedestrian walkway.
Also the foot wide length of pavement to the rear of them next to the road is just wide enough to tempt the odd pedestrian to put themselves in harm’s way.Even if the kiosks weren’t there, does a drainage channel really have to go right in the middle of the pavement?
This is a practice that really irritates me, and is the one criticism I’d also have of the O’Connell St paving which has recieved similar treatment.
You splash into it in winter, and trip over it in summer, and it looks unpleasant too.
In this case surely it would have been simple to slope the paving either to the river side or down to the roadway where a decent storm drain could be installed?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) 🙂
A typical sight in Irish country towns below, living heritage destroyed and a new idealised version generated with happy clappy paint and window boxes:
Heritageism gone mad in what is Mitchelstown I think – the render stripped from the façade to reveal a never meant-to-be-exposed crude rubble wall, and sashes removed 😡
A lovely Picturesque-gothic building wrecked with PVC frames in Bantry – I saw much worse in other gothic houses where priceless 1830s gothic timber frames have been removed in favour of plastic.
A fine distinguished building possibly in Kenmare has also got the treatment:
The (otherwise) delightful tiny little village of Durrus in west Cork:
…is there anything worse than top-hung casements in older buildings?
The lovely little town of Dunmanway has a fairly decent amount of sashes surviving, but a heck of a lot of this too:
But much of this pales into insignificance when one sees the state of the so-called heritage town of Cobh. Its distinctive Victorian charm has been ravaged by replacement frames, here’s its landmark hotel:
And a lovely round-ended terrace showing a before/after-like scenario:
Didn’t have the time or will to capture half of the devastating damage done to this important town.
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:
Yes, although less manicured, the Rialto section looks great I think and a worthy idea for the Croppy area.
The park’s in a sorry state – a handy clear space for the television coverage of the President’s journey from the Ãras to the Castle for inauguration but that’s about it 🙂Don’t think so – ah the olden days when rashers came from pigs, thank goodness they come from supermarkets these days – done away with all that nastiness 😀
Yes Paul the Greenore line was taken up recently. Calls were made for it to be used as an amenity area/natural walkway though the town, but naturally the road option proved way too attractive. An inner relief road or somesuch is going in I believe, in combination with the evential demolition of the notorius Hill St bridge and the probable installation of a large roundabout.
The scale of this whole site is truly vast – if the sports pitch to the rear of the centre is also aquired the whole place is large enough for a new community, slap bang next to the town centre. The potential for a sustainable high density residential community here is huge – it would inject so much life into the town. The site a few metres away on the other side of the bridge is also vast, running way out to the railway station.
The potential here to redefine Dundalk cannot be underestimated – how this space is developed will in no small way determine the future of the town way into the future.What you say about the retail chasing about the town is just what i’ve been thinking for quite a while Lexington – personally I see little need for this huge new centre in the Ramparts considering the centres the town already has. Without a doubt the Long Walk is going to be transformed into a backwater space, and maybe even return to the wasteland it was in 1990.
The new centre in the Ramparts is called ‘The Marshes’, and the flagship Penneys in the LW are moving out to it, and Dunnes Stores new national flagship is also going to be located there – so perhaps their Park St store will close also.
The Penneys move is going to hit the LW very significantly – only Heatons are moving in to take its place I believe.
To the extent it may well have to redevelop to accommodate larger stores. The idea even five years ago of the Long Walk having to redevelop, if not maybe even close in the long term, would have seemed unbelieveable.There is a certain logic in developing the Marshes in that all unit sizes in both existing centres are minute, catering for local retailers – whereas the Marshes is attracting Easons, Boots, A Wear and all the rest of them – all of which simply cannot be catered for at present. It’s a great shame the town’s traditional streets aren’t absorbing these retailers – they’re capable of doing it.
I think there is a genuine need for larger units to accomodate British mulitples, but there’s no doubt that the anchor tenants are moving about like pieces on a chess board for purely economic reasons. It has to stop with The Marshes.I see a pp for another ‘discount supermarket’ on the Avenue Road on the site of the interesting 1940sish terrace of buildings there :rolleyes:
Much more significant are plans to demolish 😮 the original and best Dundalk Shopping Centre, and replace it with a sprawling Tesco superstore/filling station etc etc, as well as the vast derelict site beside it.
There’s a heck of a lot of rumours going round, but either way, whatever happens is going to be huge – with a potentially regional impact.The Centre is half empty at this stage now with leases being bought out across the board – it’s in a sorry state now compared to its 70s and 80s heyday – remember the red gridded ceiling of the central area and the glossy bronze-stripped ceilings underneath the first floor with ‘feature’ bare light-bulbs? 🙂
Things looked up after the early 90s refurb but went downhill with the Long Walk 🙁
Now it is going to be in trouble with this new place opening – already Penneys are moving out again towards the brightest light in the town, just as they did from the ‘Old’ Shopping Centre in 1993.I saw this scene Brian miles away in a village in the depths of rural Ireland and thought of you 🙂
Have you ever seen a more ridiculous pavement in all your life?!
Instead of making the pedestrian area level with the road and demarcating it in a different colour, a virtual skateboard park was created with undulating concrete to take account of the low doorways.
This pic doesn’t do the craziness justice – fun all the same 🙂
