In the days before the 1950s homes were hardly able to retain heat. There were a variety of reasons for this. Firstly they had no central heating system. The warmth of the home was located in the main room and was usually a huge fire. The second was the kitchen where the oven system was constantly on. However, when the cold came these systems were based on coal and wood so they had to be constantly fed. Even when the newer homes of the ’50s were being built the idea of heat insulation was not really a consideration, especially as most of them were prefabs of walls of concrete.
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One of the greatest areas of heat loss is from the windows. Whilst it was unusually for some dwellings to even have windows that there was just a plain single plain one. It is amazing to think that so much heat is allowed out of a single window pane but conversely it also allows the heat in warming the room to unpleasant levels. You may still have single or need your glazing replaced and Cheltenham Double Glazing experts www.firmfix.co.uk/ can certainly help with that.
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It was long known that glass was perfect for allowing people to see out of the house but it was useless at stopping the heat getting out when trying to warm the home or heat out when it was cold. This is one of the reasons we have rather thick curtains or lace netting to make up for it but the material can only provide a certain degree of protection. It was not much of a technical leap to realize that if one pane of glass offered some protection then two would be an even better job.
The problem was that it was not a simple case of sticking two bits of glass together. Whilst this semi-worked it was clear that it was not a perfect solution. The main problem was that the moisture could still get in between the planes and this created moisture and mould. What then was the answer?
The solution was requiring a more modern answer and science was needed. The answer came that a vacuum was needed between them so that there could not be any moisture between the glass. The environment of a vacuum does not allow anything to exist. This is a common cause for replacement when the system fails.
