Commercial Secondary Glazing

The commercial case in one paragraph

Most commercial glazing problems are noise, heat loss, draught and glare, and most commercial buildings cannot solve them by replacing windows. Either the facade is listed, the building is leased and structural alteration is not permitted, the cost of scaffolding a five storey elevation is prohibitive, or the disruption of stripping windows out of an occupied floor is unacceptable. Secondary glazing addresses all four problems from inside, one room at a time, and can be removed at lease end.

Acoustic performance and noise reduction

Noise is the reason most commercial enquiries start. Performance comes from three things: the mass of the room side glass, the depth of the cavity between the two windows, and the quality of the perimeter seal. A deep cavity of 100mm to 200mm, which most commercial reveals allow, does far more than any sealed double glazed unit can, because the wide air gap decouples the two panes. Acoustic laminated glass adds a damping interlayer that flattens the resonance where road and rail energy sits.

• Cavity depths of 100mm to 200mm typical
• Acoustic laminated glass up to 6.8mm
• Continuous compression and brush seals
• Fixed panels where nothing needs to open

Thermal improvement and running costs

A single glazed commercial elevation loses heat continuously and drives perimeter overheating in summer and cold complaints in winter. Adding a sealed room side layer with Low E soft coat glass cuts conducted and radiated loss and removes the draught, which is often what staff actually complain about. On a leased building it is one of the few energy measures a tenant can install and take away again.

Offices near railways, roads and flight paths

Open plan offices on a main road or a rail corridor have a specific problem: intermittent peaks that break concentration rather than a constant background level. That is why phones ring louder and meetings move. The fix is mass and seal on the window wall, plus honest advice about which openings actually matter, since the openings nearest the desk banks carry most of the disturbance.

• Rail corridors and level crossings
• Arterial roads and bus routes
• Flight paths and approach lanes
• Plant, extract and neighbouring premises

Hotels, schools and listed commercial premises

Hotels buy secondary glazing because a bad night costs a review, and the work has to happen room by room without closing a floor. Schools buy it for classroom noise, safety glazing and draught control, and the work usually happens in holidays. Listed commercial premises, from town centre offices to pubs and museums, buy it because the facade cannot be touched at all. Each of those has its own page below.

How work is phased around an occupied building

Every project is surveyed first and manufactured to template, so fitting is assembly rather than fabrication. Work is programmed floor by floor or room by room, usually in agreed windows: out of hours, weekends, half terms or low occupancy periods. There is no external access, no scaffolding and no need to strip out existing windows, so a room is normally back in use the same day. We provide RAMS, insurance documentation and DBS checked fitters where the site requires them.

• Room by room or floor by floor phasing
• Out of hours and holiday working
• No scaffolding and no external access
• RAMS, insurance and site inductions