We are repairers first. That is not modesty, it is how the business works. Most weeks somebody rings us convinced they need the whole house done, and most weeks we find a failed sealed unit, a worn friction stay or a hinge that has dropped four millimetres, and they keep the windows they already have.
But sometimes replacement genuinely is the answer and new double glazing is the right call. When it is, we will say so, and we will fit them.
This page is about that side of the work. What we supply, which styles suit which houses, what actually drives the price, and how to tell whether you are at that point yet.
When new windows are actually the right call
There are five situations where we stop trying to save a window and tell people to replace it.
The frame itself has failed. uPVC does not rot, but it can crack, and a crack that runs through a corner weld is not repairable in any honest sense. Older frames that have gone brittle in strong sun will crack again next to wherever you patch them.
The glazing is single. If you still have single glazed units in a Scottish house, no repair changes the fact that you are heating the street. That is the one case where the energy argument stands up on its own.
The hardware is obsolete and the sizes have moved on. We hold a lot of parts and we can usually find something, but there are systems from the early nineties where the espagnolette, the stay and the keeps were all proprietary and none of it is made any more. When we cannot get parts for three windows in the same house, replacing them is cheaper than chasing them.
The window is the wrong shape for how you now use the room. A kitchen with a fixed pane where you want an opener, a bedroom with no fire escape opening, a bathroom with clear glass. Those are not faults. They are reasons.
You want them changed. That is allowed. Nobody has to justify wanting a nicer looking house to us.
If none of the five describes your windows, read repair or replace before you spend anything. It goes through the arithmetic properly.
The double glazing styles we fit
Most Scottish houses take one of five or six window styles, and the right one is usually decided by the building rather than by taste.
Casement windows are the default across Lanarkshire. A hinged opening sash in a frame, side hung or top hung. Simple, well proven, and the cheapest of the lot to keep going in twenty years time because the hardware is standard.
Tilt and turn windows do two things from one handle. Tilt inwards at the top for ventilation you can leave open safely, or swing the whole sash inwards for cleaning and for escape. Common in flats and in anything above the first floor.
Flush sash windows sit level with the outer frame instead of standing proud of it, which gives you the line of an old timber window without the maintenance. If your street is full of period stone frontages, this is usually the one that looks right.
Reversible windows rotate right round so the outside pane ends up facing into the room. In a tenement flat or a top floor bedroom where the outside of the glass is otherwise unreachable, they solve a problem nothing else solves.
Vertical sliding sash windows are the uPVC version of the traditional Scottish sash and case. The sashes slide up and down on balances rather than swinging out.
Bay windows, corner posts, curved heads and Georgian bar layouts are all doable in any of the above. Matching an existing bay is measuring work rather than a different product.
Glass, and what to ask for
The frame gets all the attention. The glass does most of the work.
A standard modern sealed unit is two panes with a warm edge spacer and argon between them, with a low emissivity coating on the inner face of the outer pane. That coating is the single biggest thing separating a good unit from a poor one, and you cannot see it.
Triple glazing adds a third pane. It is not the automatic upgrade the adverts suggest, and we have written honestly about whether it is worth it in a house like yours.
Beyond that:
- Safety glass is not optional in doors, in side panels next to doors, and in any pane whose bottom edge sits low to the floor. Toughened or laminated, and there is a difference between the two worth understanding.
- Obscure glass for bathrooms comes in a range of patterns with different privacy levels. Changing the pattern does not mean changing the window.
- Acoustic laminated glass is the honest answer for traffic noise. Triple glazing is not.
- Georgian bars can be inside the unit, stuck to the surface, or a proper astragal. They look quite different from the pavement and they cost quite differently too.
- Trickle vents are worth having, and worth understanding before you decide you hate them.
What it costs
We do not publish window prices, and we are suspicious of anybody who does.
A window price is a function of size, style, glass specification, how many openers you want, the colour, whether there is a bay or a curved head involved, and what has to happen to the surrounding wall when the old one comes out. Any number quoted before somebody has measured is either a guess or a hook.
What we can tell you is how we quote. Somebody comes out and measures. There is no charge for that and no charge for the visit. You get a figure. The figure does not expire on Friday, it does not halve if you sign tonight, and there is nobody on commission in this business, because there are only a few of us and we are all out fitting.
If replacement turns out to be the wrong answer for what you have got, we will tell you that at the measuring stage rather than after you have paid for it. Sealed unit replacements start from £75 and a lot of jobs that look like whole window jobs are that instead. Our repair prices page covers what that figure includes.
Scotland is not England
This catches people out, usually because they have read an English website.
FENSA does not operate in Scotland. Replacement windows here come under the Scottish Building Standards rather than the English building regulations, and the certification schemes that operate north of the border are different ones. The energy standards, the ventilation requirements and the rules on escape openings from bedrooms are all set in Scotland.
If your property is listed, or sits in a conservation area, the rules tighten considerably and uPVC may not be permitted at all. Your local authority is the one that confirms what applies to your address, and it is worth a phone call before you order anything. Our notes on the Scottish rules cover the general shape of it.
What the job actually looks like
For a typical house it is a day, sometimes two. The old frames come out, the new ones go in, and they are sealed and made good inside and out the same day. We do not leave a house open overnight.
Plaster damage around the reveal is the thing people worry about most. Done properly there is very little, but any window that was fitted before the current generation of trims can leave a line that wants filling and painting, and we would rather warn you than surprise you.
The old frames and glass go with us.
Where we work
Wishaw, Motherwell, Hamilton, Bellshill, Airdrie, Coatbridge, Larkhall, Carluke, Lanark, Shotts, Blantyre, Uddingston, Cambuslang, East Kilbride, the south side of Glasgow and out as far as Livingston. The full list is on our areas we cover page.
Getting a figure
Send photographs on WhatsApp if you want a rough idea before anybody comes out. A picture of the window from inside, one from outside, and a rough width and height is usually enough for us to tell you whether you are in repair territory or replacement territory.
Otherwise ring 01698 604 278, Monday to Friday, eight until five, or contact us here.
Before you replace anything, it is worth reading what is involved in double glazing repairs, because in most cases one component has failed rather than the whole window.
People in our own town may find it easier to start with our page on windows in Wishaw, which covers repairs and replacements together and goes through every style we fit.
If a composite front door is what you have in mind, our Palladio composite door page covers the range we fit most often.
Written by the team at Wishaw Window Repairs. Over thirty years repairing and replacing uPVC windows and doors across Lanarkshire.