Our industry is doing it’s very best to promote triple glazing and install it as the next step in fenestration for homeowners. Many are predicting that 2015 will be the breakthrough year for the product and start to see it gain some market share. But just as we start to get used to the idea of triple glazing, Roof Maker, a skylight and glazed flat roof supplier, is already moving on to the next step, quadrouple glazing!

0.3 U-Value

According to Roof Maker, their quadrouple glazed skylights can achieve an incredible 0.3 U-Value:

Quad glazing is twice as good as TRIPLE in terms of insulation performance with a U-Value of 0.3W/m2K.

Our slider kerbs now feature a clever Thermal Core product to give them a true hybrid engineered weight saving design that balances out the additional weight of the 4th pane of glass. The U-value of the Thermal core product is 0.24W/m2K giving an overall product U-Value of 0.6W/m2K (TRIPLE) and 0.3W/m2k (QUAD) which makes it the best in the world for an aluminium and glass rooflight, true unbeatable world class thermal performance.

Now that is a U-Value to envy! You have to admire the extreme forward thinking of the company. It also puts them ahead of companies bringing out new products in this market. Most are double or triple glazed. Some only double. To then be able to go out there and offer quad, well that should put them ahead for a few years at the very least.

A sign for the future?

So you look at this and wonder if quad glazing will make it into the traditional window and door market. My initial reaction is no. The triple glazed market isn’t really established yet. It’s going to take 5-10 years for that to happen. Until it becomes a proper market, we can’t start looking beyond that.

For skylights and glazed flat roofs, quadrouple glazing can work. The size of the products allow quadrouple glazing to be a viable option. Roof Maker have got around the weigh implications and production issues and have made it work. Making quad glazing work for normal windows and doors however is far more complicated. There are hardware issues, weight issues, production problems, storage, installation, transport and cost implications all to consider.

A sign for the future for windows and doors? No. A sign for skylights and lantern roofs? Probably.

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