by T EWING
•
20 Dec, 2019
A warm dry home is essential for good health. Our InivisiTherm® system can make a huge contribution to a healthy home environment, virtually eradicating excess moisture, condensation and the black mould that can result from a cold damp home, as well as making homes warmer and easier to heat. We caught up with one customer who first had InvisiTherm® installed five years ago to find out how her health, and that of her family has fared since she had the system installed. Pauline Armory, a Registered Nurse, lives in a beautiful home in the idyllic village of Luncarty in Perthshire. With its decorative paned windows, her 1980s property has a style and character not often associated with buildings of that age. However, despite its prettiness, her home, which she moved into 17 years ago with husband Stephen and a young family, was damp, cold and hard to heat. What particularly concerned Pauline was the fact that every winter she and her family suffered repeated chest infections, coughs and colds that lingered for weeks. “Winter was difficult for us, we suffered from frequent chesty coughs and colds. And to add to the pain, our bill for heating oil was almost £600 every month – and our home was still cold and damp. That just wasn’t sustainable in any sense of the word. We set about doing everything we could to make our home warmer and dryer including replacing radiators and maximising insulation in our lofts and under the floor, but it didn’t make much difference. We even installed a biomass boiler which vastly reduced our heating bills. But our home remained chilled. Eventually it became clear to me that the windows were the culprit: they are very pretty paned windows, but they are single glazed. The cold surface of the glass caused huge amounts of condensation, and black mould was growing on every window. “I suspected that the condensation and mould on our single glazing were linked to our illnesses. Using my scientific background, I started looking into the association between cold, mould-ridden homes and respiratory illness and became increasingly concerned. I immediately started investigating what could be done to improve our windows. I had a quote for replacement windows but at almost £50,000, that just wasn’t an option. And anyway, our windows look lovely, they add so much character to the house – I didn’t want to rip them out. “My search for an alternative to replacing our windows led me to Glaze and Save, and I contacted the company owner Tanya Ewing to come and see what they could do for our house. What a revelation! She explained in detail why our windows were making our home so cold and damp and explained exactly how the InvisiTherm® system could help. We soon realised that the system would allow us to keep our nice windows while making a huge difference to the comfort in our home, and, I hoped, to our health. “We went ahead with a first phase of InvisiTherm® installation in our bedrooms. And what a difference we experienced immediately. Warmer, dryer, no mould at all and we still had our pretty windows. Over the next couple of years we installed InvisiTherm® in almost all of our paned windows. “It’s no exaggeration to say that our lives have been transformed since we had InvisiTherm® installed. We have a warm dry home that is pleasure to be in. I don’t spend hours cleaning the mould off our window frames and mopping up condensation. Our electric blankets have been banished to the linen cupboard and we use summer weight duvets for most of the year. But most importantly our winter illnesses have almost disappeared. The coughs, colds and chest infections that plagued us before are no longer a problem. “It’s helped our wider family too – we have a close relative who has Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disorder (COPD) and really struggled when she visited us. Now we have InvisiTherm® in place, she is warm, comfortable and we are able to enjoy her company without worrying about the effect of our home on her health.” Pauline is clearly delighted with her InvisiTherm® system and the way it has transformed her home. But as with any family, things change and with both her children leaving home to study, Pauline and her husband are thinking of a move to the city for the next phase of their life. “We’ve loved country life, but with our children heading out into the big wide world, we’re excited at the possibility of relocating to the west end of Glasgow. We dream of life in one of the gorgeous grand tenements there, and now we know how brilliant InvisiTherm® is, we know that those lovely big windows with views over the Botanic Gardens and Byres Road need not worry us – we know that InvisiTherm® can help us have a warm, healthy home wherever we live.”