Comment on UK Windows and Doors: 500 jobs to go as firm goes bust
tal@kbin.social 1 year ago
Submitting this, as it's a bit surreal to see a window manufacturer go out of business after reading a bunch of articles about how Ukraine's been unable to obtain windows. When I was reading some documents from the Ukrainian government last year, one of their most-immediate economic asks was for funds to help build window and glass construction facilities, because they couldn't get ahold of windows to replace those destroyed by explosions.
A team of Warsaw-based volunteers have won praise for their campaign to replace windows in Ukraine damaged by Russian shelling.
Co-founded by Polish activist Zofia Jaworowska and Kyiv architect Petro Vladimirov, the Okno Projekt (Project Window) has so far seen hundreds of disused windows gathered and transported to enjoy a second life in war-torn Ukraine.
Born in July of last year, the initiative was launched when a wave of Ukrainians began returning home from Poland to liberated territories around Kyiv and the Chernihiv and Kherson oblasts.
Jaworowska said: “Winter was coming and it was necessary to help with repairing houses as soon as possible – in the first two months alone we managed to collect nearly 700 windows from across Poland send two full trucks to Ukraine.”
Explaining the urgency of the action, Vladimirov added: “Because of explosion, glass and windows are the first thing that are destroyed so we decided to concentrate on supplying windows. We found out that Ukraine has no facility producing window glass and that before the war 75 percent of it was imported from Russia and Belarus.”
By contrast, Poland is the largest exporter of windows in the EU.
“One and a half thousand windows in a year sounds like 'wow' to someone, but looking at the scale of the destruction, we understand that it is just a drop in the ocean,” said Vladimirov.
tal@kbin.social 1 year ago
googles
It looks like the British government is presently subsidizing insulation improvements to British homes. One option that it apparently chose not to do was to subsidize upgrading to double-glazed windows:
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1152132/gb-insulation-scheme-government-response.pdf
Were the UK to increase the rate of upgrading to double-glazing and further incentivize the donation of the removed single-glazed windows, I would think that this would kill two birds with one stone.
GreatAlbatross@feddit.uk 1 year ago
I can understand why Ukraine wants to build up glazing facilities. Glass is an absolute pain in the backside to transport in final form. It’s heavy, fragile, and often large.
You can almost hear the shipping companies sucking air through their teeth!
As for the window upgrading, there is method to the madness. Adding 360mm of insulation to a roof space can drop the amount of heat lost in a house significantly more for the same money. Especially since the govt. will not give money to people for DIY materials (very sad).
For example, if a house has 20 square meters of single glazing. Heat loss of single glazing is 5wmk (5 watts of energy lost per meter per degree difference between outside and inside). If it’s 0 outside, and 20 inside, that’s 2KW of energy being lost per hour through the windows.
Replacing them with modern triple glazing (1wmk) saves us 1.6KW, at a cost of probably £10k, if not more.
A roof of 60 square meters, with an uninsulated value of 2.5wmk is 3KW of loss. Putting in 360mm of insulation would bring that to 0.18wmk, a 2.8KW saving, but the cost is likely closer to £3k, even with all the surveys involved.
And when you’re rolling this out at a country level, with a limited budget to get it done, the lowest hanging fruit gets picked!
tal@kbin.social 1 year ago
https://sundries.com.ua/en/the-lithuanian-capital-will-share-window-glass-with-ukraine/