I lived in Edinburgh for many years and improving the thermal properties of the housing stock would be an excellent idea: there's no point staying pretty and dropping dead from energy poverty mid-winter...

I'm sure that there is must be some aesthetically pleasing substitute for all those single-pain sieve-leaky sash windows...

Lining the walls with aerogel would also help IMHO.

Rgds

Damon

You would think window companies would jump at the chance to design energy efficient windows for historic buildings...

You would think window companies would jump at the chance to design energy efficient windows for historic buildings...

Museums are poor and most historic home owners want authenticity. Baltimore is famous for its Formstone covered housing which lowered energy costs. However, the yuppie and bougie classes moving into formstoned homes are tearing it off because it is not "authentic".

What makes this really amusing is many of those remove Formstone babbling on proudly about carbon footprints, farmer markets, and organic food.

Finally! I've been living in this beautifull city for a few years now and as a foreiigner it always amazed me that there was a ban on double glazing in the old houses! (And believe me, Scottisch winters can be cold (as their summers). Yay!

This is excellent news; though this is the windiest and chilliest countries in Europe, building insulation and heating is woefully inadequate (I live in Glasgow; many of the tenement houses here have neither wall or ceiling insulation--nor do they have double glazed windows!)

I would imagine this change to allow new windows in historic buildings has come about because of the recent (30-50%) rise in natural gas prices across the UK. At some point a strict adherence to 'historical realism' becomes untenable. Though there are certainly ways to integrate renovation and good aesthetics.

Wrong wrong wrong.
Isn't the greenest thing to do REUSE and REPAIR?
Refinishing historic windows is the best thing to do, and if you know anything about historic homes and how they work as a system, just a repair on a window doesn't do anything if there are leaks throughout the entire structure. (I lived in a 1880's farmhouse, so I'm speaking from experience).

If you deal with a reputable historic preservationist, they can usually repair the casements, install proper sealants, etc and make the historic window almost as efficient as the cheap, vinyl replacement crap that is manufactured with chemicals and almost never lasts as long as the warranty implies (see consumer product safety committee recalls and complaint websites for examples).

Trust me, restore the window before buying replacements.

Cheers,
Tom-tom

http://www.woodwindowrestoration.com/

http://www.oldnorthknoxville.org/archives/windowrepair.htm

are u serious? changing the windows can damage the whole structure! how can u people think that changing a window on a castle that will bring asthma and allergies because of the moist that will be inside, will change the earth!? there are a lot of risks whit adding a thermal insulation to a old building : a moist environment and moist foundations will not only weaken your health(everybody has allergies these days) but will also help bring down the hole structure.

you think people that ban these windows have no idea about this?
let me give u an example: in one hour a square meter of air enters your home trough wooden windows( the old doggy ones).double glazed? zero...unless they have holes in them for that...so...same thing