Shock horror! The Building Regulations change on June 15th! Quickslide’s Ade issues a timely reminder.
I opened my last column with the comment: ‘Unless you have been living in a cave you will have picked up something about a new set of Building Regulations that are due to become statutory in June this year.” Well, from what I have seen and heard in the past few weeks – including a seminar I attended with a room full of other fabricators – there’s an awful lot more cave dwellers around than I first thought.
It seems that somehow the news that a brand-new version of the Building Regulations has escaped an alarming number of contractors and installer. To remind everyone, just in case – the Building Regulations are defined as setting the “…standards for the design and construction of buildings to ensure the safety and health for people, including those with disabilities in or about those buildings and to help conserve fuel and power.” In other words, they are the rules by which every building job in the land is governed. Non-compliance is enforceable under law and can result in fines, which can be severe.
Now I apologise if I have patronised you but if you know all about the new Regs, that they become mandatory from June, there are plenty of others reading this magazine that, apparently, are completely unaware. That is the point I am making…
My interest as a window and door manufacturer is just that of course – windows and doors – and so I will give you a snap-shot of what you need to know on that subject. I covered the section called ‘Document F – Ventilation’ in my last column as it is the most controversial of the new regs, with many up in arms about the insistence that most windows and doors fitted from 15th June must have trickle vents fitted.
But there are other changes, not least the thermal performance of windows and doors, which is covered by ‘Document L1A’ and ‘Document L1B’ and before you glaze over (sorry!) completely, it’s relatively straightforward.
‘1A’ covers new homes and, in essence, it means that U values for windows are improved from the current minimum figure of 2.0 W/m2K, to 1.6 W/m2K. However, the Regs encourage beating this by specifying windows as low as 1.0W/m2K, which is a decent step forward in my view. Solid residential doors improve by similar figures for the minimum value.
‘1B’ covers existing dwellings and is therefore more likely to affect readers of this magazine. And here I believe that the Government has missed a trick. U values improve from the old figure of 1.6 W/m2K, or Band C under Energy Ratings, by a smidgen to 1.4 W/m2K, or Band B, minimum. Why has the Government missed a trick? Because most window manufacturers produce frames comfortably better than this already and, if we were pushed most of us could do even better.
And thereby hangs a tale: Most jobs will be spec’ed according to the minimums demanded by the Building Regulations and, as I always say, if you use a decent window and door fabricator, and you can trust them to supply you with products that comfortably comply, thus avoiding falling foul of building inspectors. But, with soaring energy prices you can impress your homeowner customers by offering extensions, loft conversions and the like that significantly reduce energy costs. Including the windows and doors, for which the additional cost is minimal.
Why not go beyond ‘average’? Your customers will love you for it.
