The debate about triple glazing continues, but not just in the window industry. Self build and home renovation experts as well as the heating industry are all discussing its merits. And the jury is still out. The general consensus seems to be that the UK climates don’t really warrant triple glazing and the complications it brings – i.e. greater expense and a heavier window. But whatever complications triple glazing brings and whether or not it makes a marked difference to fuel bill costs, it does make a building more comfortable to be in. According to a physics study carried out by the PassivHaus Institute in Germany, triple glazing allows the internal temperature to stay closer to the desired 21oC at 18oC than double glazing at 16oC. And as fuel costs continue to rise, consumers may well look to reduce any amount of heat loss they can. Especially if you take on board and apply the explanation of the ‘exponential function’ by Dr Albert Bartlett to rising fuel costs. One of our favourite industry bloggers recently forwarded Dr Bartlett’s lecture on the subject and highlighted the fact that if gas prices continued to rise by 12.9% each year for the next 30 years, we would eventually be spending over &pound20,000 on our fuel bills! This may sound a little far fetched but the method of calculation seems more realistic than other best guesses that have been made. And either way, the point remains that consumers continue to pay more and more for their fuel and are looking for ways to minimise this increasing cost.

While Edgetech would sell twice as much spacer if triple glazing was to become the standard in the UK, we believe in this instance – for the reasons above – it’s the market that will determine whether it moves in this direction. If it does we can help them with the best Warm Edge Technology for triple glazing bar none. Applied automatically a triple glazed Super Spacer sealed unit can be produced every 35 seconds and is always applied accurately and perfectly aligned between both sets of units. This is often a problem for traditional spacers, who suffer from a stepped effect within a triple glazed unit.

Ultimately we welcome people using twice as much spacer but only if it’s right for the market, and in this instance it’s so close to call, it has to be the market that decides the future of triple versus double glazed units.