Chipping Norton villages composite window upgrade

A re-visit to a local project that we installed back in 2018, but we never got around to photographing. This timeless combination of black and white will be appearing on traditional and modern homes for decades to come.

A dual colour choice is always more cost-effective when the internal and external materials of the window are different. In this case, STM Tinium is timber inside and aluminium outside – requiring completely different paint types and processes, so it makes no difference if you ask for a different standard colour inside and out. In contrast, if this were a pure timber product, a hefty surcharge would be introduced because that creates a lot of extra and repeated processes for the factory.

One optional extra that was included here are the hinges: these were colour-matched to the frame to help them blend in. By default, these would have been a shiny stainless steel.

Outward opening terrace doors, such as these, will come with a handle-operated friction brake. At any open position, putting the door handle down on the main leaf will hold the door in place.

Stable doors are less popular nowadays, but Denmark are still offering them in outward-opening form. Inward opening stable doors have inherently poor airtightness, and all our factories agree that it’s not something that can be worked around or hidden behind clever marketing. Outward opening is therefore the only option they and we are happy to offer.

Also from STM, this timber stable door was made at the maximum possible width, but this was not enough! Since the existing structural opening was quite a lot wider, we discussed the solution you see here with the customer: solid hardwood posts were installed on both sides of the main door frame.

Top guided hinges allow the widest possible opening casement in any of our window systems. Spreading the weight evenly across both hinges removes the issues experienced by large side-hinged windows. All side hinges experience a torque force based on the weight of the window. Too much weight, and the casement will start to drop downwards – this is why the maximum width for a side hinged window is much smaller than a topguided (it varies, but our sidehung casements go up to around 890mm; topguided can be over 1500mm wide).