Windows and Doors
With the introduction of new energy ratings on home builds and renovations across Adelaide of 7-star’s windows and doors play a crucial role in achieving this energy rating.
Windows in particular play a huge role in making a room feel open and large. A window can create privacy while still letting in natural light (opaque glass). But most of all, a window can allow amazing outlooks to rolling hills, city views and oceans.
When a new home or addition is designed and submitted to your local council and authorities for building rules approval, the application must be accompanied by an energy rating certificate. This certificate is created by an energy efficiency consultancy agent. These consultants will assess the overall building energy rating and, in turn, issue a certificate which will allow this part of the approval process to pass, but it will need to meet certain criteria, and this is where doors and windows come into play.
Materials Used to Make Doors and Windows
Aluminium:
In the majority of our new home builds and modern extensions/renovations, the external doors and windows are framed with powder-coated aluminium. The ability to select a colour from a broad range gives the flexibility to match into a colour scheme throughout the entire property and its surrounds.
When using an aluminium product, we use a local supplier here in Adelaide called Statesman Windows. Statesman has a great showroom located in Cheltenham and can provide a great variety of clear and obscured glasses.
Wood:
When we are renovating older homes across Adelaide in locations such as Tusmore, St Georges, Toorak Gardens and Burnside, our clients often like to keep older style sash windows and which we can recondition for them onsite. It is often that when an addition is put onto the rear or top of these homes, this theme follows from front to back, and we can then have new doors and windows made in Pine, Oak, Merante and Cedar.
Wood is a product that will require more ongoing maintenance over the years, but will give a more heritage feel to a home’s external appearance.
Once we have decided on which style of window to use, it is then the type of glass that will be used next. There are a number of factors to consider when selecting the right glass for your home’s windows.
What is the function of the window? Is the window designed to let light in but create privacy due to overlooking issues into a neighbour’s property? If this is the case, then obscured glass would be the right choice.
Does the window need to control external temperatures entering? Double and triple glazing is a good solution if there is a large amount of glass in the home and we need to control external temperature entering a house, but also stop internal climate levels from exiting a new home.
What size is the door or window? Depending on the size of the piece of glass, this could determine what the style will be. If we have a large, fixed window on the second storey of the building facing west, it will be taking on a lot of heat from the summer sun in the evening and should be considered for double or triple glazing. But with this, the consideration of weight onto the walls and the concrete slab below. Careful engineering will need to be calculated to ensure the overall structural integrity is sound.
Thickness of the glass. Today majority of homes that are not using double or triple glazed products will have a 3 to 4mm glass for all their openable and fixed window panels. When the window is designed as double or triple glazed, the thickness goes up to 5 to 6mm for added strength and insulation purposes. If we are doing a decorative window on a period style home (an example is our Tusmore project), they may opt for a feature glass such as lead lighting.
Lead lighting has very few thermal or sound preventive characteristics, just purely aesthetic properties.
Are There Different Types Of Doors?
The two common classes of doors in residential construction, class 1 and class 10 buildings, are internal and external doors. These two door types are self-explanatory as to where they are both used.
An external door will be made of solid wood if wood is the selected material, and if aluminium, it will be robust in its construction, as the two main purposes of these doors are to maintain safety in the home and help maintain the temperature of the building. The external door at the front of the home also needs to look nice, as it is a feature of the home itself from the street frontage.
You will often see that an external door is 10mm thicker than an internal door, measuring 45mm in width and an internal door measuring 35mm in width. An external door will often be hung and fixed to the door jamb with 4 hinges due to the weight, and an internal door hung with either 2 or 3 hinges.
Internal doors are typically lightweight and provide separation between various parts of the house. Depending on the function of the door, it could be fitted with either passage, privacy or entrance style hardware. To be able to achieve 7-star energy ratings in the home, it is becoming more common to zone off different sections of the house with doors and this allows better control of climate throughout the house itself.
A standard internal door’s dimensions are 820mm wide X 2040mm high. There are variations on this if required, such as 770mm wide and 700mm wide to suit rooms such as bathrooms and laundries, so the room can be kept as large as possible without losing space to unnecessarily large doors.
An entrance door to the front of a home will typically be one of a very large size. It is designed to provide a huge impact. These doors can range up to 1400mm in width and 50mm in thickness, with heights varying up to 3m.