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UPVC window maintenance

Does what it says on the tin
Itsallaguess
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UPVC window maintenance

#208186

Postby Itsallaguess » March 17th, 2019, 12:51 pm

It's a long winter for a couple of our UPVC windows, especially the bathroom one that gets cracked open after every shower, and has to withstand some pretty horrendous weather, which hammers the exposed closing and locking mechanisms when it's in this opened position during these periods of poor weather.

The window tends to get harder and harder to close over the winter, which can take it's toil on the handle-mechanism, as I've learnt to my cost, so it's around this time of year that I give it a quick round of maintenance, and what a difference it's made this time year.

The chief culprits that tend to get weathered and sticky over winter are these closing mechanisms and the side-brackets that they close into -

Image

Our troublesome window has four of these side-closure locks, with the two at the top closing upwards, and the two at the bottom closing downwards, and both the lock-pins and the bracket slots that they feed into get weathered quite badly over the winter, and cause a tightness to develop in the handle locking-mechanism, especially in the last final 'latching' period where the internal handle latches into a locked and closed position. This gets tighter and tighter to close over the winter, and I think it's actually the development of this final 'lock-closed' tightness that eventually does for the handles eventually..

Sometimes I'll get in with a little brass scratch-pen (https://tinyurl.com/y4t9mpyn), and scrape away any weathered surfaces, but this year they didn't look too bad, so all I needed to do was give each lock-pin, and each of the bracket-slots that they travel into, a quick squirt with some Wilko 3-in-1 bike maintenance-spray (https://tinyurl.com/yy9lz5rw). This cheap spray comes with a handy straw attachment, and crucially has a really good trigger-mechanism, which is very good at only delivering tiny amounts of the lubricating spray when required, which is ideal for this type of job. I've used some other types of lubricating spray which only seem to have 'full-on' trigger mechanisms, which is fine for some jobs, but for something like this, a more delicate trigger does help a great deal.

As well as the above closing-pins, my window also has a couple of extra pointed pins that come out of the top and bottom corners too, which also feed into some frame-brackets similar to the ones the above pins move into. I usually give them a look-at too, and lubricate them up after cleaning if necessary.

All finished now, and it took around 45 minutes including cleaning up. The window now closes much, much more smoothly, and the locking mechanism of the internal handle is now much easier to close, and is clearly putting much less strain on the handle-mechanism, which will prolong the life of the handle itself. I've had a few handles fail over the years, and it always seems to be the tough 'final-locking' action that kills them off, so a good round of maintenance like this should keep them going for much longer.

There's usually a couple of little slider-brackets involved with these UPVC opening windows too, and I usually give their runners a squirt of the maintenance spray too, which also helps to ease the flow of the sliders.

I'll post a link here of the hosting website of the above image, which goes into some more details if any actual adjustments need making, as it might do if draughts develop for example -

How to adjust a UPVC window -

https://www.wikihow.com/Adjust-a-UPVC-Window

Cheers,

Itsallaguess

neversay
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Re: UPVC window maintenance

#289070

Postby neversay » March 7th, 2020, 4:05 pm

Thought I would bump this post from last year as it was on my list to do now spring is around the corner. :)

Thanks @itsallaguess!

Dod101
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Re: UPVC window maintenance

#289075

Postby Dod101 » March 7th, 2020, 4:50 pm

Itsallaguess. Why don't you get a good extractor fan?

Dod

Itsallaguess
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Re: UPVC window maintenance

#289135

Postby Itsallaguess » March 8th, 2020, 9:24 am

Dod101 wrote:
Why don't you get a good extractor fan?


Hi Dod,

Well, I've got a good extractor fan - in fact the fan I've had for the past couple of years is probably the best and quietest bathroom extraction fan that I've ever owned, as some time ago I chose to swap out the previous ceiling-mounted fan, which was both noisy and had very poor extraction-performance, and install one of these in-line fans above the bathroom ceiling, in the loft -

Image

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Manrose-MF100T/dp/B01G8DM5UA

The throughput of the above fan is miles and away better than the previous ceiling-mounted one, and the additional benefit is that now it's mounted on one of my loft-beams, and away from the ceiling, there is zero noisy mechanical vibration when compared to the really noisy ceiling-mounted one that was installed previously, and the combination of those two qualities mean that it's just a superb solution for those two issues...

But getting back to your point, I think I know what you're asking, which is why I need to keep the UPVC bathroom window open and exposed to the poor weather, if I've got a good extraction fan, and the answer to that is because if I didn't open the bathroom window, then the powerful extraction fan would be sucking nice warm air from the rest of my house, to suck through the bathroom as part of it's extraction process. Whilst that's likely to do an admirable job in terms of clearing the bathroom of damp air, it would be highly inefficient in terms of me then having cooler household air sucked into my house, which I'd then need to warm up again...

I very much prefer to keep my bathroom window ajar whilst having a shower, and often for some time afterwards, so as to allow the extraction fan to pull air from outside, into and then out of my bathroom, and hence clearing the dampness from my bathroom without needing to use the rest of my warm household air to do that..

As an aside, it's a timely bump that neversay performed yesterday, as just this morning I've replaced a bedroom UPVC window handle that's been on the way out for some time, and which finally gave up the ghost a week or so ago. I ordered two of the handles linked below, for a grand cost of £6 delivered for the pair, and one has been installed this morning -

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00IYRTYBM/

Cheers,

Itsallaguess

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Re: UPVC window maintenance

#289142

Postby Dod101 » March 8th, 2020, 10:02 am

IAAG

It must be a fairly powerful extractor fan to noticeably pull warm air from the house. I have never had that problem and to some extent it surely defeats the purpose of the extractor fan. I have a biggish main bathroom where I usually shower. It has a small window and a good extractor fan, but I am sure nothing like as good as yours. I do not have condensation and in about 10 minutes or so any moisture disappears with the window hardly ever opened. Mind you the bathroom is always warm when I shower as it has two hot towel racks/ladders both heated from the central heating and I think that helps.

For much of the time, at least in the winter, you will be drawing moist, cold air into your bathroom from the outside?

Dod

Itsallaguess
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Re: UPVC window maintenance

#289147

Postby Itsallaguess » March 8th, 2020, 10:19 am

Dod101 wrote:
For much of the time, at least in the winter, you will be drawing moist, cold air into your bathroom from the outside?


Hi Dod,

Well all I can say is that it works for me, and given that there's so many variables with each of our situations, then we're naturally going to end up with solutions that suit us individually, and I'm quite happy with things as they stand. If the price for opening my bathroom window is a little light maintenance once a year then in all honesty it's one that I'm quite happy to pay.

It does sound like you keep your bathroom at a temperature that's generally higher than my own, so perhaps that's where the primary difference is..

Cheers,

Itsallaguess

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Re: UPVC window maintenance

#289163

Postby PrincessB » March 8th, 2020, 12:05 pm

You can get heat recovery extraction fans which might be of interest. Expensive mind you.

You can also add a heat recovery drainage system which captures some of the heat from the warm drain water to preheat the cold inlet.

https://www.heatraesadia.com/products/r ... t-recovery

For even more money, you could consider a whole house heat recovery system.

Opening windows seems so last century.

:)

B.

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Re: UPVC window maintenance

#289573

Postby UncleEbenezer » March 10th, 2020, 8:18 am

If you want to recover heat from your shower, that unit from Heatrae Sadia seems hard to find in the UK. The only distributor I could find wanted £700 for it.

Better to import it. For example, there's an Irish distributor who'll supply it for one third of the price, even with delivery costs.


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