Velfac Ribo doors a cautionary note

[Simon R]

We have Velfac windows and doors and are very happy with them. However we recently had an incident with a RIBO door glass being broken.

 

It turns out that the doors may not be re-glazed, so if you have a case where the glass gets broken it’s the cost of a new door to fix it. There is no mention of this in the sales literature or other online resources from Velfac. For us it cost more that the original door as we had a discount on our order. The cost of replacing the door and re-hanging is over £1200 plus in excess of a three week wait for manufacture. I’m not happy that the doors are fit for purpose and have complained to Velfac, being able to re-glaze seems pretty fundamental. Glass does get broken and glazing units do fail.

 

As we had to replace the door we decided to take the door apart to establish why it’s not possible to replace the glass in situ. Removing the external aluminium trim was fiddly but not difficult. It’s held in place by click tabs similar to those used in the car industry.

 

With the trim removed it looked as though the glass could be removed. There we numerous spacers to hold the glazing central, in addition to the spacers there were areas about 200mm long x 20mm wide and 40mm deep where the space between the frame and the widow was filled with silicon, a LOT of silicon. Trying to cut through these and get the glass out was very difficult, which I would guess is why they say it's not possible to re-glaze.

 

[Jeremy Harris]

That's interesting, as we had a glazing unit crack on our Munster Joinery windows, and a fully glazed door that needed adjustment.  In our case the internal trim comes off pretty easily to reveal the glazing unit, which has plastic wedges all around holding it in place, plus the same large blobs of silicone.   The fitter managed to cut the silicone out OK and commented that he thought ours was unusual in having so much silicone around the glass.  All told it was probably no more than an hour's work to change a glazing unit and adjust the door by fitting better "top and toe" wedges.

[Onoff]

I get involved with bfo commercial glazing replacement on high rise buildings. Often the case that the frame is bespoke. These units are siliconed the full perimeter of the glazed panel where it sits in the frame. Take the frame and glass out as one, sit on trestles and cut through the silicone. Remove the broken glass. Clean up the frame, new glass in. 2 part silicone from a compressor fed gun. Wait 4 hours to cure enough to put back on the facade.

Edited April 20, 2020 by Onoff

[Simon R]

2 hours ago, Jeremy Harris said:

The fitter managed to cut the silicone out OK and commented that he thought ours was unusual in having so much silicone around the glass

 

2 hours ago, Onoff said:

These units are siliconed the full perimeter of the glazed panel where it sits in the frame

Thanks for the wisdom, it's not so much as they can't be re-glazed it's that they can't be bothered. I must confess it seemed highly unlikely that they could not be re-glazed.

I'll measure the existing glass then smash the glass to get it out to give me proper access to the silicon to make it easier to remove from the frame.

[Onoff]

The fitters I see often use a cheese wire type saw. 

[dpmiller]

windscreen fitters use'em too.

[Onoff]

8 hours ago, Simon R said:

 

Thanks for the wisdom, it's not so much as they can't be re-glazed it's that they can't be bothered. I must confess it seemed highly unlikely that they could not be re-glazed.

I'll measure the existing glass then smash the glass to get it out to give me proper access to the silicon to make it easier to remove from the frame.

 

Think about it in our case. It takes a team of 6 guys to change a window on average. There for the whole long day as in 10 hours plus. 4 hours is literally spent dossing whilst the silicone cures enough to put the unit back in. That's 24 man hours, 28 if you count my time in it, just waiting. As the frame has to be reused there's no way around it.