No, it's a real question. I'm quite handy and if I buy some double glazing windows would it be very difficult to put them in myself and save some money?
Strictly between you, me and GCHQlad, I once broke into someone's house by removing their double glazing windows to get in. Once you remove all the sealant around the window, they literally just slide out. They also just slide back in and the putty they are held in with is easily reapplied.
It was an elaborate prank involving a bet that I couldn't steal something he had bought that had to be dismantled to remove, he had to build it in the house by bringing the stuff in in sections, and that it would take too long and I'd be caught. So I reversed a van up to his living room window, removed the windows, stole the item, and put the windows back in again.
He still doesn't know how I did it, even the slight draught in his living room he had to have fixed didn't make him twig, and I got a £200. It was a £1000 bet, but I had to pay off the neighbour and the 3 boys that helped me steal it.
I removed it is one entire unit with the panes still in the frame. The whole thing just slides out with remarkable ease. Cheap double glazing is a burglars wet dream.
Some "professional" installers are terrible cowboys and leave you with windows which are draughty, make howling noises whenever it's windy and are perpetually "settling". I mean a gap appears, you use sealant, it shifts some more, more sealant... and this is over a year after they were installed.
Windows are a special case when it comes to cowboy builders.
Somehow it's grown into an incredibly competitive market. They're marketed more aggressively than any other form of home improvement.
Can you think of any other circumstance where you are making a large purchase of several thousand pounds, and you being tempted with buy one get one free offers? It's a market where there there is very little room for professionalism, if you're buying your windows from a shouty man on the television, they're going to squeeze every last penny out of their margins. I expect their installers will be paid per job, not per hour, which means everything will be done as fast as possible so they can get back into the van and onto the next house.
