I have recently bought a fridge. You may wonder what that has to do with double glazing, but hear me out.

Once the delivery men had dropped my new fridge freezer off, they left the usual bits of paperwork and what not, but they also left me a certificate which showed me the energy efficiency of the product. My particular model is an A+ version. You may think that this is good, well, yes and no. It’s good if you think all A ratings are the same. It’s not top of the pile when you consider that the ratings for fridge freezers go up to A+++.

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To me, when I start seeing all those +’s after the A rating, it starts to look a little silly. This has always been my worry when it comes to WER’s for double glazing. You can’t get any higher in the alphabet than A, so the only alternative is to add some +’s. But as the boundaries of what is possible in terms of energy efficiency are pushed and become better and better, the only way to go will be to add more plus signs.

This isn’t the best way to demonstrate energy efficiency. All those +’s after the letter A really do start to look daft. People turn off after seeing one of them, three or four more won’t make a blind bit of difference. What this does do is to help justify the use of U-Values. You can’t stick some endless mathematical symbols on the end of it to show off energy efficiency. They are worked out on solid equations which seem to be far more trustworthy than WER’s are.

So, this is the future of the energy ratings for windows ladies and gents. More and more +’s will be piled on to the end of A ratings because the system is now trapped in a scheme which poorly gets across and very important message.

What do you think will happen in the future? Are U-Values the best way to demonstrate energy efficiency to the customer? Should we stick with WER’s and make the best of it? All comments welcome in the section below.