New Gorbals Housing Association’s (NGHA) latest modernisation project in Glasgow is a bold attempt to improve the thermal performance of the housing stock and to remove the most vulnerable members of the community from fuel poverty.
This target is made more achievable because the project includes the installation of £6.5m-worth of energy-efficient windows and balcony doors – 20,000 units in all – which are being manufactured in Finland, where they’re no strangers to the odd cold day.
The windows are being manufactured and installed by family-owned Skaala Windows & Doors. Founded in the central-western Finnish town of Kauhava in 1956, Skaala now employs 450 people and has subsidiaries in Sweden, Russia and the UK (in Aberdeen). Turnover this year exceeded €80m and the company exports around 20% of its products, with around a third of that percentage destined for the UK.
The NGHA development is Skaala’s largest single project to date and although it includes a range of products, the main window type is the company’s triple-glazed tilt & turn window with a U-value of 1.1W/m²K.
Impressive though that may be, Skaala is able to improve on that. In fact its Alfa 30 low energy window, which started production earlier this year, achieves a U-value of 0.58W/m²K, considerably lower than the Finnish building code minimum requirement of 1.0W/m²K.
"The Finnish building code standards for windows’ thermal insulation performance are the strictest in Europe and the Alfa 30 window exceeds these by 70%," said Jyrki Jaskari, development director. "Windows account for a very large proportion of heating energy loss and this is where the Alfa 30’s true potential can be shown."
The new Alfa window was developed in cooperation with the Technical Research Centre of Finland with the express intention to break new boundaries in terms of thermal insulation.
"We accomplished this goal by using the latest innovation within insulation glass technology, maximising the relative size of the insulation glass unit compared to the whole window and putting thought into every component to make each one as energy efficient as possible," said Mr Jaskari.
"One critical area of development was the edge area, which typically is the weakest link in a low energy window. Timber turned out to be an extremely competitive material compared to expensive and difficult to work with plastic composites, although its structural strength is slightly lower. However, this issue was solved by a new type of sash where the insulation glass unit is an integral load-bearing part of the structure – much like in the automobile industry.
"Choosing timber as the primary material because of its environmental friendliness and weather resistance was an easy call," continued Mr Jaskari. "It is in a class of its own when it comes to the combination of thermal insulation and recyclability so the goal was to maximise the amount of timber in the product structure."
Skaala’s work in the glazing technology sector also led to the development of the Alfa frost-free window in 2010 – the first low-energy frost-free window on the market.
"The lower we go with U-values the easier it is for mist (or frost) to appear on the window," said Mr Jaskari. "One of the biggest developments during the past 20 years has been in glazing and the addition of different coatings which have prevented heat escaping through the glass and this has kept the glazing clear from mist."
Skaala Windows & Doors prides itself not just on its environmentally-friendly products but also on its ISO 14001-certified sustainable operations and business culture. It’s an ethos that has wider recognition, including by the judges at this year’s TTJ Awards when the company was a finalist in the Environmental Achievement category with its Green Field and Factory programme.
"We launched our Green Field and Factory programme some time ago but during the last year it has reached a point where the whole company lives and breathes through it," said Mr Jaskari.
"It is a two-layer programme. Our window and door solutions are energy efficient and ecofriendly and our operations both in factories and on sites are designed and executed in a way to minimise the strain on the environment."
This entails designing products using materials that are either renewable or recyclable (the Alfa 30 is almost 100% recyclable), minimising waste in the factories and on sites and recycling dismantled products from domestic renovation projects rather than sending them to landfill – the company recycles almost 200,000m² of glass per year, for example.
In addition, all the factories are powered by hydro-electricity and wood biomass from the company’s own production processes is used to heat the plants.
"We do everything in as green a way as possible," said Mr Jaskari. "With new employees that thinking is instilled in them right from the beginning. We have our own training programme, called the Skaala Academy and our Green Field and Factory ethos is an essential part of that."
