Window handles are small, cheap and almost never the reason a window needs replacing. They’re also the part people most often think they can’t get any more, particularly on windows that are a good few years old, which is why we see so many houses with one window nobody opens.
You can nearly always get the part. Here’s how to work out what’s actually wrong.
Start by working out where the resistance is
Everything depends on one question: is the handle broken, or is the handle struggling against something else?
The handle drives a mechanism hidden inside the window frame. On most uPVC windows that’s an espagnolette, a long metal strip running down the edge of the opening sash with cams or mushroom-shaped studs along it. Turn the handle and those studs rotate to grip into keeps on the outer frame, pulling the window tight shut. The handle is just the lever. The mechanism does the work.
So when a handle fails, it’s either the lever that’s gone, or the mechanism behind it that’s gone and taken the lever with it. Different jobs, and it’s worth knowing which before anyone starts.
The four ways they fail
Snapped clean off. The lever has broken, often at the base where it’s thinnest, or the little casting inside has cracked. Handles are usually die-cast metal or metal with a plastic coating, and after a decade or two of being turned they simply fatigue. Nothing else is necessarily wrong. A new handle goes on and you’re done.
Loose and wobbly. Nine times out of ten, the two screws holding it to the sash have worked loose. They’re usually under a small plastic cap or behind the handle itself when you swing it round. Nipping them up carefully is one of the very few window repairs genuinely worth trying yourself. Be gentle, because overtightening into uPVC strips the hole and then you’ve made it worse. If it’s still loose after tightening, the screw holes have gone or the handle casting has cracked internally, and it needs replacing.
Spins freely and does nothing. The connection between the handle and the mechanism has gone. On window handles that’s usually the spindle, the small square bar underneath the handle that pokes into the mechanism, either worn round at the corners or sheared. Sometimes it’s the drive slot inside the mechanism that’s worn instead. A new handle with the right spindle length normally sorts it, but the mechanism gets checked at the same time.
Stiff for months, then failed. This one matters most. If the handle has been getting progressively harder to turn and has now broken, the handle was the symptom, not the cause. Something else was making you force it: the mechanism is stiff or seizing, or more often the sash has dropped slightly so the cams are grinding against the keeps instead of sliding into them. Fit a new handle onto that and it’ll break again, probably within a year. The mechanism and the alignment need sorting alongside the handle.
Which way does yours go?
Worth knowing before ordering anything, because handles are handed and sized.
They come left or right handed, and the height of the base varies (that’s the spindle length, which has to match your window’s mechanism depth). There are also several distinct families of handle: cockspur handles on older windows with a curved arm that hooks over a wedge on the frame, espagnolette handles on most modern ones, tilt and turn handles that do two jobs, and locking versions with a key. They aren’t interchangeable.
You don’t need to identify all that yourself. But if you photograph the handle from the side as well as face on, with the window open so the mechanism edge is visible, anyone who knows windows can tell in seconds what you’ve got, and turn up with the right part first time.
The key question people ask
Yes, key-locking handles are worth having on ground floor windows and anything reachable from a flat roof or an extension, and no, they aren’t expensive. They’re also worth thinking about if you’ve got young children, since a locked handle stops a window being opened.
One caution, and it’s a serious one. If you fit locking handles, everyone in the house needs to know where the keys are kept, and they need to be somewhere you can reach in the dark. A window that can’t be opened is a window you can’t escape through. Keep them close by, not in a drawer upstairs.
When it’s a bit more than the handle
A few things that show up alongside a handle problem and are worth having looked at in the same visit rather than paying for a second one.
If the window has to be pulled or lifted to get the handle round, the sash has dropped and the friction hinges are worn. If the window rattles once shut even with the handle turned, the keeps need adjusting or the seals have gone. If the handle turns fully but the window still feels loose, the mechanism isn’t engaging properly. All of those are small parts and small adjustments, and all of them wear handles out early if left.
Getting it done
Window handles are one of the cheapest, quickest repairs there is, and it’s mildly infuriating how many people are told they need a new window because of one. We keep a wide range of handles, spindles, espagnolette mechanisms and hinges on the van, and we cover Wishaw and all across Lanarkshire.
Send a photo of the handle on WhatsApp, ideally one face on and one from the side with the window open, and say what it’s doing. We’ll tell you what it needs. No call-out charge, and no interest in selling you a window you don’t need.
Call us on 01698 604 278.
A handle change is about as small as a uPVC window repair gets, and we carry most of the common patterns in the van.
Related advice
See our window repair service page for what we do and where. Our contact details are here.
Stuck on something else? Our window and door advice section covers around fifty of the faults we see most.
Written by the team at Wishaw Window Repairs. Over thirty years repairing uPVC windows and doors across Lanarkshire.