Huge gaps where my double glazed windows should close

[Neil Gallacher]

We’ve got aluminium double glazed windows that are about 15 years old and some of them have become outrageously draughty. The vertical side of the casement (on the side where the hinges are) will not come anywhere near the frame on closing. In the worst case, the gap is about 8 mm and with energy costs rocketing we can’t live with the appalling winter draughts any more.

I’ve done everything that’s been recommended to try and fix this, including replacing what looked like perfectly good old hinges with new, hoovering out any dust or grit, applying lubricant spray… No improvement. I have never been able to spot visually what is causing this problem either, but that’s beside the point.

The window company, Alan Spear in Plymouth, went bust years ago (cue hollow laugh!).

The only solution that I can think of came to me when we realised that a light push on the outside of the casement on this edge of the window will ease the window into the frame snugly… So I could easily attach a Cockspur handle (of the appropriate stack height) to the inside of the casement on the problematic hinge side. Therefore the final act in closing the window would be to pull and close this third handle to get the inside of the casement snugged in tight.

This seems pretty bonkers of course - but it looks to me like it’s got to work. Does anyone else have a decent solution for this that they’ve tried?

yours hopefully
Neil

 

[He who knows]

Do you have hinges with things like a limiter you can press from inside but not outside so that intruders can't open windows wider, or that allow you to slide an open window along a track so you can get your hand on the outside of the glass to clean it?

I've had the problem you describe, and I found that what I needed to do was to give all the hinge and track parts a good clean, removing any dirt and debris, then give it a light spray with WD-40 type stuff, and work the hinges and sliders etc back and forth a few times and then get the window properly closed. But you say you've tried all that.

Once you've then got them closed properly, have you tried opening/closing them by a small amount, then a bit more, etc? You might be able to work out how/where things are going out of alignment?

Also, have you tried just slamming them when you close? Obviously not hard enough to damage them, but I find mine benefit from a hard close now and then to keep them settled into the right place.

Adding a handle as you suggest seems like a mad, utterly-last-resort solution.

You could see if a local window installer could come and have a look. Your supplier may have gone bust but he will have been using off-the-shelf parts.

 

[Neil Gallacher]

Useful thoughts; thanks for taking the time. The problem has replicated itself even with the slickest, cleanest new hinges fitted in place. But I’ll try the firmer closing method, and perhaps get a fitter around as you suggest.