Danny Williams, managing director of Pioneer Trading Company, distributor of the Gerda residential doors, reflects on the demands placed on manufacturers in the drive to lower emissions.
As winter approaches, cloaked in the demonic entrails of the next budget, the spectre of yet higher energy bills is giving homeowners across the UK nightmares.
Much as I hate the reasons behind this creeping concern of our property owning audience base, it should provide us with plenty of opportunity to upsell on the superiority of compliant product qualities, futureproofing the homeowner against more changes further down the line.
Just like our climate, the energy efficiency topic gets hotter and more urgent with every telling. There are increasingly stringent U-value requirements being placed on UK manufacturers of windows and doors despite very little support, help or financial incentive.
We are simply left to fulfil those criteria through product investment and innovation. It might not be fair, but those who are going to survive these next few lean years of a labour government are the ones who will take the lead and ensure their products are foolproof and overly compliant.
To be honest, the demands of schemes such as the FHS Future Homes Standards do not worry us, in terms of product compliance. Our Gerda doors, manufactured in Poland, have been designed from the outset to provide exceptionally low U-value ratings from 0.74 W/m²K. The bitter winters and searing summers of the Polish landscape have put the Gerda doors through their paces over many years, and they are more than capable of dealing with our milder seasons.
And naturally, we have the paperwork to prove it.
It is the installation of the Gerda door, the assurance that, once it is hung on its hinges, it is there to stay, with no warping, bowing or dropping – where many of our homeowning customers are really going to see the benefits.
Our door’s steel and aluminium construction is wrapped around a polyurethane core – one of the best materials around for minimising heat transfer. Because the door slab is combined with a highly thermally efficient aluminium frame, U-values are optimised.
And nothing is lost through the fitting stage.
While many of our composite competitors’ doors, once installed, start to shift around through changes in temperature, water ingress affecting moisture levels, inferior fixings, or simply a lack of tolerance in the design, any alleged U-value gains could be lost.
I recently carried out an installer training session for one of our trade partners – Lime BDS down in Southend in Essex. It was the first Gerda door they had installed and I wanted to oversee the installation and train the fitting team.
It had been a while since I’d done a proper fitting – the property was a renovation project and the front door had already been removed when I arrived, so I was not sure what type of door we were replacing.
But the satisfaction of slotting the Gerda door onto its hinges, and then straightaway experiencing its reassuring ‘thunk’ when we opened and closed it, was a timely reminder of why I chose to distribute the Gerda door in the first place – it just feels good! And because it is so beautifully designed and manufactured, it always goes together quickly and smoothly. So satisfying!
The FHS does not affect the replacement market, but installers need to be aware of the expectations and get themselves ahead of the curve when it comes to promoting door ranges that offer compliance in the long term.
Integrating the ability to futureproof any changes in regulation further down the line is an excellent marketing advantage when talking to environmentally conscious homeowners who want to make sure that they are doing everything within their power to conserve energy, and conserve their bank balance at the same time.