Put your money where your mouth is!
Apeer CEO, Asa McGillian, says the industry must start 2025 by coming clean on composite door U values.
I am referring to the practice of attributing individual door U-value accreditations across an entire product range, rather than testing each door one by one. I understand why this is done – it is, after all, an altogether more lengthy and expensive process.
But the result of this is that the information given out to installers and homeowners about the true thermal claims of various products is just wrong.
There is a lack of transparency that is staggering and I can only surmise that the reason is to drive more sales. The reality though, is that it is a clear attempt to hoodwink unsuspecting installers into driving the sales of doors that would not be able to compete with a better quality product.
Lower grade doors are being compared alongside premium products on a like for like basis, amid claims that they are the same in terms of thermal efficiency.
Is there anyone out there who can claim, hand on heart, that a hollow 70mm monocoque slab with zero insulation will outperform an Apeer slab with a core manufactured with 110kg/m³ density structural foam? Such a claim defies the law of physics – yet it is being made with impunity.
To be honest (unlike others!) I am completely fed up with it. It’s only on the instruction of our solicitors that I am not naming names, despite the fact that we have, at our own expense, carried out extensive independent testing of a number of rival door slabs to highlight the problem which is infecting our sector.
An impartial team at the TUV institute Rheinland undertook full testing to ISO standard ISO 8302:1991 / EN 12667:2001 ‘Determination of Thermal Resistance’, which gave us the thermal resistance numbers for 44mm foam filled, 48mm timber core, 70mm high density foam filled, 70mm hollow monocoque and 100mm high density foam filled slab.
And guess what? The results showed clearly the direct correlation between the thickness of the material, the type of material and the density of the material. Quelle surprise! We didn’t need independent testing to tell us this, but obviously the rest of the industry does need reminding!
We then undertook further testing with IFT Rosenheim who did a side-by-side Thermal Hot Box test with our 70mm high density foam filled door and a hollow monocoque door and the results proved what we had long suspected – whilst our door met the declared U Value of 0.85 W/m²K (we actually declare 0.9 W/m²K) our competitor’s door did not even meet the required minimum U value of 1.4 W/m²K or anywhere near.
It doesn’t take an expert to understand that a door with a 44mm slab cannot have the same thermal performance as a door which is 60% thicker. We sell 44mm, 70mm and 100mm doors but we don’t claim that they are equal in performance.
In the same way it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to understand that a timber core product with low thermal performance in comparison to a high-quality dense foam core can be ‘top performing’ or ‘market leading’, phrases commonly used in advertising both to the trade and more disturbingly to the consumer.
The TUV report shows that a 70mm high density foam core is 3.5x more thermally resistant than the timber core slab that we tested.
I want these door manufacturers to put their money where their mouth is and invest in independent testing. In the meantime, we will continue to challenge them. But they won’t be able to hide forever!
