Leading British window systems company, L.B. Plastics Ltd, has developed the new Sheerframe HED window which brings together a thermally superior profile system and new manufacturing technology. 

The Sheerframe HED (Homogenous Energy Dynamics) system creates stronger, lighter and significantly more thermally efficient windows, offering housebuilders a simple and cost effective route to achieving window U-values of just 0.8W/m2K in their drive towards viable zero carbon homes.  Such a low U value is equivalent to the rating required for Category 5 and 6 star rated dwellings in the Code for Sustainable Homes.

Sheerframe HED allows window U-values to be cut significantly while still providing homebuyers with low maintenance, visually appealing and enhanced security windows designed to cut energy bills.  Like all Sheerframe systems, broader sustainability issues are also comprehensively addressed - the profile is lead-free in composition and 100% recyclable.

David Strang, Sheerframe marketing director at L.B. Plastics says, “This new system revolutionises the performance of windows and how we fabricate them.  There are multiple benefits for housebuilders, principally the HED system’s ability to achieve an ultra-low U-value, well below the 1.8W/m2K routinely specified.

“Until now, performance at this level could only be achieved by very specialist and fantastically expensive, often unsuitable windows with long delivery lead times, from northern Europe.  The Sheerframe HED system is designed specifically for the mainstream UK housebuilding industry and is available now.”

Builders aiming to improve the thermal performance and therefore the star rating of their houses may use these low U value windows to help lift the overall dwelling SAP rating as the building regulation challenges get tighter and tighter in 2010, 2013 and 2016 on the road to Class 6 performance and Zero Carbon Homes.  Where builders may struggle to find practical, cost-effective zero carbon answers in all areas of house construction, having a 2016 window solution today will help offset some of the more costly and intractable aspects of zero carbon construction, which may not have reached a reliable and accessible level as yet. 

David Strang adds, “The Sheerframe HED system delivers windows in all the most popular styles in numerous coloured foil and painted finishes, including standard casements, fully reversibles and tilt & turns.  Windows made using HED retain their excellent visual appeal which is perfectly suited to British architectural styles.”

Sheerframe is widely specified by many of the UK’s leading housebuilders and the company is already in negotiation with several to supply Sheerframe HED via its national network of registered fabricators and installers.