Thailands Windows Glass Aluminum and Wood Frames

[dirtydog]

As we have a question about windows I thought it best to get this boring subject over and done with in one thread.

There are at least 3 choices of frames for your windows in Thailand, wood, aluminum and plastic, plastic is the least used and the newest, this is produced here in Thailand and is used for double glazing, wood is the most common and is pretty crap for this climate and involves a lot of maintenance, so lets start with Aluminum.

The aluminum framed windows are made to whatever size the hole is and is charged by the square meter, for doors there is the choice of swing or sliding, swing doors are more expensive as thicker aluminum is used and also a door closer is fitted, the door closer is hidden in the aluminum framework and that by itself costs about 1,500baht.

For a normal house the aluminum comes in 4 colors, alloy color, the normal brown color, white and black, the alloy color is the cheapest and they do differant grades of alloy in this color.

The glass for a house you have a choice of colors and thickness, 5mm or 6 mm is the standard, clear glass is the cheapest, brown glass absorbs heat and makes rooms hot if the sun is on it, also they have reflective green and blue glass, obviously the green and blue are the most expensive but do look pretty classy.

If you are making and fitting the windows yourself the aluminum is sold and charged by the meter, it comes in 6 meter lengths, the glass is charged by the foot, makes it nice and complicated to work out, if you can use a glass cutter you can buy the full size panes and save about 50 percent of your money, glass is pretty easy to cut and if your doing a whole house it is worth learning to do on a few scraps of old glass, the tolerances with aluminum frames is about 15mm, the base inside the frame you just chuck some wood in to raise the glass and protect it from the aluminum.

These sort of windows etc dont really need much upkeep, the wheels on the sliding ones need replacing about every 8 years, and the base plate if it is on a used doorway maybe needs changing every 5 years.

The top 2 pictures are of the base of 2 sliding doors, there are 2 holes on each, the top is to access the fixing point of the wheels, the bottom one is to access the screw to change the height of the wheels.



Here is a normal handle, these need changing every 5 years as they tend to look like this after a while, the locks on these aren't very good and a 3 year old could pick them.



Here you can see where the wheel casing has caused the alloy to corrode, this would cost about 800baht to make good, ie 2 new wheels and a new piece of aluminum, but I cant be bothered, that price includes labour by the way.



Here you can see I have pulled at the felt strip, this is placed in the fixed pane so that the sliding one doesn't grate against it, the fixed panes are just drilled and riveted into place, luckily your curtains hide that mess.

For commercial buildings 10 or 12 mm glass can be used, the profiles and aluminum used is differant to all the pictures posted above and also costs about 3 times as much as the above stuff.