Low maintenance costs and a traditional appearance persuaded Gloucester City Homes to choose the Modus flush casement PVC-U window system from Eurocell for its Bentham Green development.
Gloucester City Homes (GCH) has a total of 20 one-, two- and three-bedroom homes on the Bentham Green development being built by Lioncourt Homes under a Section 106 agreement (based on that section of the 1990 Town & Country Planning Act), with half to be rented and half to be for shared ownership.
The estate is in an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty that comes under the jurisdiction of Tewkesbury Borough Council’s planning department, which uses the Cotswold Design Code as its reference, so the planners were insistent that flush casement timber windows should be fitted.
Kelly Thomas, Development Manager for GCH, commented: “We don’t want to create a financial burden in the long run for our shared ownership residents, so these windows made sense. The organisation is responsible for the future maintenance of the 10 affordable rent units so this product will save the organisation money in the long run. They’re very attractive, they have a very long life span and they don’t require much maintenance. We felt the product was of high quality and a very strong offer.”
Lioncourt contacted Eurocell which introduced it to the Modus range and to A&B Glass, the Tewkesbury-based fabricator and installer. Together they approached the planning authorities with samples and with photographs of similar developments where timber windows had been fitted to meet planning requirements but had been replaced with inappropriate aluminium and PVC-U equivalents within months.
Coming with a 12-year guarantee, the Modus system is available in nine solid and woodgrain-effect colours, all of which are available with white internal finishes to create a light and airy living environment. A further range of more than 40 solid and woodgrain effect finishes is available, including colour both sides.
BBA certified to function satisfactorily for more than 35 years, the Modus range has a U-value of 1.2 W/m² using 4/20/4 mm sealed double-glazed units. This effective thermal performance is due to the 75mm six-chamber profile system used in the Modus that enables the range to achieve a U-value as low as 0.7 by installing triple-glazed units. This led to Modus becoming one of the first systems to achieve the BRFC Window Energy Rating (WER) of A++.
Consisting of 50% post-consumer recycled PVC-U as standard, the range of doors and windows has a smaller carbon footprint than products made or recycled outside of the UK. Eurocell achieves this by employing dual material extrusion technology (DMET) that layers post-consumer recycled and ‘virgin’ material simultaneously, so the recycled material is concentrated in the central core of the profiles where it cannot be seen once the door or window is installed.
