Saturday 10 July 2010

Leaks and Rattles

Wild weather for the weekend, and I am happy to record that the mended guttering appears to have fixed the leak problem. No need to go to bed with an umbrella any more (just kidding). On the other hand, last night the bedroom window rattled in the turbulent wind. I am going to do something positive regarding extra insulation via a DIY plastic-type sheet which simulates a double glaze effect for window insulation.

My windows, at 100 years, are so old - true - that the glass has distorted and visibly slumped. You probably knew, or read somewhere, that glass is actually a FLUID, as a fact in physics. It flows, but very slowly. A hundred years is about right for starting to notice the effect. This has little to do with the insulation issue. It mostly means that if I sit having breakfast in the front room and somebody walks past on the footpath, they definitely look wobbly through the wavy window pane. Here is one of a number of articles refuting the "urban legend", as its author labeled the idea, that glass is liquid in its molecular structure. The writer says that "even apparently intelligent people" have been fooled by the idea. I invite the person to come and have a squizz at my windows. The article is from the mid-1990s so perhaps the science community has made up its mind by now. I have made up mine, and I wouldn't want anything as trivial as newly emerged facts to get in the way.

I was last up to date architecturally in1961/62 when the apartment I lived in in Sweden, up north near the Finnish border, had triple-glazing and central heating. Pretty much it's been downhill since then. Not to worry.

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