Date: 21 March 2011
The new glazing has helped to save up to £300 a year on heating bills. The house provides a fantastic example of how to install energy-efficient glazing in homes with traditional windows - without losing their character.
In the £68,000 social housing refurbishment in Camden, Pilkington energiKare™ Legacy provides similar energy efficiency performance to standard replacement low-e double glazing but in a much thinner profile. This allows architects and specifiers to refurbish buildings in line with Part L 2010 of the Building Regulations and maintain or closely replicate the original frames.
Pilkington energiKare™ Legacy in situ at Bertram St
The aim of the refurbishment was to improve the U value of the windows from an energy inefficient 4.8 centre pane U value to an improved 1.8 centre pane U value, and with the innovative Pilkington energiKare™ Legacy glazing system the U value target was easily reached. The result is excellent thermal performance from a unit as thin as a single pane of glass.
Daniel Johncock, Building Services Engineer at United House, said “One of the biggest challenges facing local authorities and other housing providers is the much-needed retrofitting of over seven million energy-inefficient homes in the UK with a ‘hard to treat’ status. In order to improve the energy efficiency of this home, we specified Pilkington energiKare™ Legacy as it is an unrivalled glazing product that enabled us to retain the existing façade appearance, whilst substantially improving one of the poorest performing elements of the building fabric.”
Pilkington energiKare™ Legacy utilises two panes of glass separated by a gap of 0.2mm (compared to a typical 16mm gap in traditional double glazing). The glazing’s overall thickness of 6mm is enough to provide an aesthetically pleasing glazing solution where a slim profile is needed and a thermally-efficient window. Moving to glazing with a low centre pane U value whilst maintaining the high light and solar transmission associated with single glazing can save over £300 per year on heating costs, and around 32 tonnes of CO2 over the lifetime of the window, in a typical 3 bed semi-detached property.
Pilkington energiKare™ Legacy utilises advanced Pilkington Spacia™ technology.
This consists of an outer pane of low-emissivity glass and an inner pane of clear float, with a vacuum rather than air or another gas in between.
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