Who am I to tell you, that what I'm doing is right, and that maybe just maybe you should adopt the same thing?
As some of you may or may not know, I work in the renewables industry, although glass and triple glazing is a stable point of my business and its really the bread and butter of what we as a company thrive on, we also specialize in things like Biomass boilers, ground source heat pumps, Air source heat pumps, under floor heating, Mechanical heat recovery systems, timber frames as well as energy efficient doors and separate structures like winter gardens and glass houses.
Now, if that first paragraph hasn’t made any sense at all, and the only thing that did make sense is windows, don’t worry, I will try and enlighten you and teach you the fundamental basics of what all those systems do and how they effect the way your home performs and why they are fundamental when designing an energy efficient home!
Anyway that’s to come over the next few weeks on the DGB blog, which I will be doing 2 guest articles on per month.
Before we get technical and before we dive into the science and technology behind the various products and methods of construction, I’m aware that most of the people on here may not even be interested and will most likely think that all of the stuff above is either:
* Too expensive
* Doesn’t effect you selling windows
* They are just gimmicks…and expensive ones at that
* Triple glazing isn’t worth it, you will never make your money back, I will never recommend it.
* There’s plenty of work out there for basic window installers out there like us?
The statements above are things that I hear day in and day out, and I will admit that at first I was one of those people (around 9 years ago) who said exactly the same things…what makes it even worse is - I was the negative git the who was designing the buildings and houses, advocating that energy efficient products were just a gimmick.
Oh how the times have changed……
I spend around a week per month outside of the UK usually in the continent or in Scandinavia, the reason for this? These are the only places that manufacture some of the best products available in the world today as far as energy efficient products like Windows, boilers and heat pumps go.
I first travelled to Germany around 9 years ago as an architectural technician with the practice I was working with at the time on a “Jolly” to see a window factory, since then my whole outlook on energy efficiency has changed and funnily enough so has my career and my business, I work in the glazing industry and too date I have only sold one set of double glazed windows BUT they did have a u value of 1.1 (yes 1.1 for the window not the glass).
Since our company started just over two years ago we have grown to one member of staff in a 60m square office to a 500m square office with around 16 members of staff and a turnover of over £1.5m not bad for a company that sells gimmicky products that don’t have a place in the UK market.
What we do and provide as a company works, and its very very popular, it takes hard work and at times its frustrating, but what I’m trying to say is that this is the way the UK is going to go and even if you take on board just a few points from what I’m going to preach over the next few weeks you too could take advantage of the growing market and set your business up for what’s going to imminently become the industry standard.
I hope that you like what’s coming up over the next few weeks and if you have any questions or if you want to know more about renewables and energy efficient architecture please feel free to drop me a line, ask me on twitter or contact me via e-mail…….I’m happy to help.
Look forward to being an integral part of DGB, see you all soon.
Mark