Measuring up and provision of cills

[Supersmithy]

Hi,

I'm about to replace my single glazed crittal windows with double glazed PVCu units but to save some money I'm going to measure up and buy the windows myself and then hand them over to a local installer.

Replacement of the windows is long overdue but the reason I'm doing it now is that I'm going to be simultaneously installing internal wall insulation of the front aspect and external wall insulation on the side and rear (semi detached). So where I'm having internal wall insulation, my windows will remain in a similar position and I'll have deep reveals, then where I'm doing external wall insulation I'll push my windows forwards in to the plane of the insulation (also giving me deeper reveals).

My windows are currently sat on a piece of timber in all openings and there is a clay external cill and a very shallow timber ledge internally. Some photos here - //www.diynot.com/network/Supersmithy/albums/19603

1) Regardless of the fact that I'm doing the wall insulation, can I do away with the piece of timber and measure up for slightly taller windows all round?

2) Internally, can I quite easily cut and install timber ledges after the windows are in?

3) Externally, I plan to remove the clay tile cills for my external wall insulation and make use of a PVCu cill to suit the thickness of the insulation. However, where I am keeping the clay cills on the front aspect, do I need to have a PVCu cill at all? i.e. Get rig of the timber and sit the new PVCu unit square on to the clay ledge without any additional protruding PVC.

All thoughts welcomed.

Luke

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• Supersmithy
• 12 Feb 2014
• 1

Untitled

• Supersmithy
• 12 Feb 2014
• 1

Untitled

• Supersmithy
• 12 Feb 2014
• 1

Untitled

• Supersmithy
• 12 Feb 2014
• 1

Untitled

• Supersmithy
• 12 Feb 2014
• 1

 

[Gazman16]

To be honest you may just be making things more expensive for yourself.

Find a reasonable price to measure, supply and fit from some local company's.

I would charge more on the fitting if I hadn't measured and wasn't supplying. It takes years of fitting and surveying to know what your doing and there are lots of regs that need to taken into account:
Ventilation
Safety glazing
Door thresholds heights
Fire escape hinges and opening sizes etc.

Also a lot of company's wont issue a Fensa certificate for windows they haven't supplied. So having to pay for the building regs certificate on them could cost more than they would charge to measure up.

 

[crank39]

Got to agree really, from the pictures those windows look a little bit tricky to measure, render/pebbledash comes into play for the width and those cills look mighty thick and without seeing the inside reveals and windowboards in person its impossible to advise how and where to measure.

Personally if i turned up to fit these having not measured them myself then i'd fear the worst before i'd even started, a rule i've lived by when i was fitting was you always fit what you've surveyed, then there is no comeback, if you've got something slightly wrong then you make it fit rather than spending the day cursing the surveyor

Not knocking your ability here but looking at those pictures theres a lot that can go wrong and to make a job look a great job the measuring needs to be bang on

 

[s60tsy]

definately agree here, a decent fitter probably wouldn't entertain the job if he's not measured it. Is the guy who says he'll do it any good or just short of work.