DIY secondary glazing tips

ejoyner

Hello, I'm looking at making some basic secondary glazing panels using acrylic sheets and magnetic tape.

Does anyone have experience and advice on:

- What type of acrylic sheet is best, thickness, cheapest place to buy etc

- Same question about magnetic tape, I'm worried it won't be strong enough to hold the sheets

- Will it matter if the secondary glazing is 10-50cm away from the actual window?

Any other tips and tricks welcome.

Thank you in advance!

FreeBear

ejoyner said:

Hello, I'm looking at making some basic secondary glazing panels using acrylic sheets and magnetic tape.

Does anyone have experience and advice on:

- What type of acrylic sheet is best, thickness, cheapest place to buy etc

- Same question about magnetic tape, I'm worried it won't be strong enough to hold the sheets

- Will it matter if the secondary glazing is 10-50cm away from the actual window?

Magnetic tape, whilst not hugely magnetic in small pieces will be fine once stuck all the way round a window frame. Your biggest problem will be general degradation of the adhesive over time, particularly with the cheap stuff - Fancy way of saying it will lose the stick between tape & frame.

When you say 10-50cm, I,m guessing you are getting your multipliers mixed up. 100-500mm (4 to 20 inches) is a huge difference in size Centimetres are for school children and dress makers. Everyone else uses millimetres and metres.

10-30mm will be a reasonable gap, 50mm, possibly a bit too much in my opinion.

knightstyle

Make sure you use decent acrylic sheet, some other sheets yellow in time.  We had secondary glazing for years, it worked well on old sash windows but ours was in aluminium track and could be slid to the side for ventilation or lifted out to clean the windows.

Chickereeeee

Make sure it is UV protected acrylic. The best thickness depends on sheet size. Use 3mm for small windows, 4mm for larger  - thicker will give more rigidity, but also more weight. 

A 50mm gap will allow room for large convection currents between the panes, thus reducing heat insulation, but it will be much better than nothing.

Clean and degrease the window frames before sticking on the metallic strip.

Depending on location, you may think the back of the magnetic strip (when stuck to the plastic sheet) looks unsightly. I have stuck a white plastic strip to the front (room side) edge of the sheet to cover this in some locations.

BUFF

I have made some DIY secondary glazing but I haven't used magnetic tape but https://www.omegabuild.com/shop/shop.php?action=full&category=secondary-glazing&product=smartframe-secondary-glazing-strip-upvc-for-4mm-glazing-thickness-2-5m as I have used 4mm polycarbonate (big windows) & imo suits the look of the windows better.
A larger gap will give you better soundproofing so you might wish to consider whether energy saving or soundproofing is more important to you.

Chickereeeee

SuperGlaze (screwed) and MagnetGlaze Pro (magnetic profile) also work well, if you have room for the slightly thicker edge.