Mullions

You may remember that we ordered additional stone mullions for the dormer windows and the window/door combo inside the conservatory. It was our understanding that these would be delivered just after Easter, on 10th April. Well they have still not arrived, and the builder was today given a delivery date of May 7th. This is a real problem, because our window order is scheduled for delivery and install in the first half of June, but only if the sizes can be taken in time to fit with the production schedule.

In fact, the window surveyor phoned this morning to see if he could come and measure up on Thursday.

It seems there are two options :

1. Get the windows done in two batches. The ones that have already been measured for first, early June, and the others at some indeterminate time in the future.
2. Take the measurements from the drawings. This is not as silly as it sounds as the mullion manufacturers have provided very detailed drawings specifically for our project. To "test" whether this is sensible, the builder is going to bring the drawings for the first batch round on Thursday, and we are going to compare them with reality. If the match is good, we might take this risk (unless Jan blog-comments to the contrary !!!)

One further window complication that we have to deal with. Because the back of the house, in places, is 3 stories high, a couple of the opening windows have been specified as fire escapes. The building regulations specify a minimum width for a fire escape window of 450mm. According to the window company, the best they can achieve, given the mullion dimensions, is 425mm. We are probably going to have to seek approval for this from Building Control, as there is really nothing that can be done to achieve the required size.

I am not really sure where the fault lies here. The plans clearly show the windows labelled as fire-escapes, so I would have thought the mullion manufacturers should have taken this into account. However, they have probably made some assumptions about the window fittings, that our chosen company cannot comply with. I just wish someone had flagged it up sooner i.e. before everything was built. Bahhhhh.

Never mind - the new tiles should arrive tomorrow.

One last thing from today. Regarding the ray of sunshine through a supposedly solid roof (see end of Saturday's post). This was confirmed as a problem with a specific row of tiles. The battening plan had gone wrong and the wrong sized tiles used. It was resolved by the end of the day.