Monday, December 25th, 2023
Christmas Greetings to all of Bressenden’s guests, past and future. The dining-room, with its red walls and distinctive leaded-pane windows, always comes into its own in the bleak winter months. But much as I love the look of those windows, I hate having to mop up the condensation from their cold, single-glazed panes in winter. The windows are not very strong, and I constantly worry about break-ins, bird strikes and cracked panes. The thin glass expanses, encased within cold steel frames, act as a refrigerator in winter, and cold water pouring down the inside of the window panes onto the oak sills first thing in the morning is not a welcoming sight for breakfast guests. Until recently, installing secondary glazing was the only solution, which is cumbersome and unsightly. Many house owners have replaced their steel windows with ugly plastic windows that have much thicker frames, thus reducing the view and the amount of light. Now, clever manufacturing techniques enable thermally efficient, double-glazed aluminium replicas to be offered as an affordable option (brand new Crittall steel windows being the unaffordable option!). During 2024 all the warped, rusting and ill-fitting 1930s single-glazed steel windows in the house will be replaced with aluminium lookalikes that have an A+ rating for thermal efficiency. The company that makes and sells them can even replicate the existing backplates and the exact thickness of the lead strips in your windows so that, at first glance, no one would notice that your windows have been replaced. I can’t wait.