Get Your Stately Home Ready for Winter | Glaze & Save

It’s never too early to ensure your stately home or historic property is ready for winter: and October is certainly not too early! Stately and historic homes are part of our built heritage and deserve to be kept in the best of conditions for now and for future generations. A little bit of care and attention now can ensure that these beautiful buildings stay in picture perfect and energy efficient condition for years to come.

Maintenance

Speaking in Country Life magazine, former Chief Executive of the World Monuments Fund, Dr. Jonathan Foyle, drives home the importance of maintenance in stately homes. He explains: “Our culture of throw-away convenience has made maintenance a dirty word. It shouldn’t be! Maintenance enables us to take our own preventative and remedial action. Repair encourages owners to make a gentle, hands-on contribution to their buildings with the glow of satisfaction at having added a complementary layer to their history. I repair and repaint my own windows, and enjoy the feeling of having understood better, and properly looked after, the house that shelters my family.”

According the Historic England, regular ongoing and small-scale maintenance can be the key to ensuring your historic building is kept in shape. By keeping on top of smaller maintenance tasks, much larger repair bills can be avoided.

There are a number of organisations, such as the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings, that give practical advice for the upkeep and maintenance of historic buildings, and also offer face to face training and have developed a number of useful guides and prompts to help remind you to do maintenance safely.

The Architectural Trustalso gives full details of developing a maintenance plan advising that “developing a maintenance plan—and committing to stick with it—is an effective way to manage the routine maintenance tasks that are essential to extending the life of your historic property. Not only does maintenance preserve the integrity of your property’s original historic and character-defining features, but it also prevents major building system failures and provides a safe environment for the occupants.”

Measures to increase energy efficiency

Not only is it important to develop a maintenance plan for the coming winter months, equally it is important to looks at energy efficiency measures that can be implemented before the temperature really drops. Perhaps the most obvious measure that would benefit stately homes in their pursuit of greater energy efficiency is properly insulation of the walls and roofs. Due to the age and vast size of many of these buildings, proper insulation throughout stately homes is usually lacking, particularly where the buildings have uninhabited wings.

Beyond the obvious, however, it has been found that most stately homes would benefit from having a combination of two or more energy saving measures installed, along with alternate fuel sources. This may seem like a vast undertaking, and it is, but it is not impossible.

There are other measures that have been employed by the National Trust for Scotland, who have installed InvisiThermsecondary glazing in several of their properties, most notably in Drum Castle and Castle Fraser. The installation of polycarbonate secondary glazing can make a five degree difference in unheated rooms; but even in rooms that are heated, a reduction in energy costs of 22.5% minimum can be expected.

The National Trust for Scotland have also tackled the issue of draughty old buildings, and their associated energy inefficiency, by installing InvisiSeal liquid draught proofing in Drum Castle. Draught proofing alone can reduce energy bills significantly, for a relatively small outlay, meaning that it has a compelling payback time. The difference it has made to the National Trust for Scotland shows that stately homes, however grand and imposing, can be made to be more energy efficient, cheaper to run and will be around for much longer for us all to enjoy.

Glaze & Save InvisiTherm is installed in National Trust for Scotland properties across Scotland and is installed in many stately homes. Our unique bespoke magnetic secondary glazing is perfect for stately and historic homes. Contact us here to arrange your free no obligation survey.