Timber Windows & Doors In Torquay
In a conservation area and told uPVC will not be approved?
Box sash windows, casements and entrance doors made in accoya, oak or engineered softwood to match what was there.
Torbay has 24 conservation areas and 16 of them are in Torquay, covering the Warberries, the Lincombes, Belgravia, Torre, Chelston, St Marychurch and the harbour. If your house sits in one of them, a uPVC replacement window is very often the thing the council will not accept, and quite reasonably so - the glazing bar sightlines and the depth of a real sash box are most of what gives those streets their character. We make windows and doors that match what was there, using a profile taken off the original rather than the nearest thing from a catalogue.
Ask About Windows Or Doors
Tell us roughly what you have in mind and we will arrange a time to come and measure. A photo of the space on your phone is usually enough to start with.
The Case For It
Made For Period Properties On A Salt Coast
Profiles taken from your window
We measure the existing glazing bar, the cill throat and the meeting rail before anything is drawn. Reproducing the section is what makes a replacement invisible from the street, which is exactly what a conservation officer is looking at.
Timber chosen for salt air
Accoya for exposed elevations, which is modified softwood with a very low movement figure and a long warranted life above ground. Engineered softwood or hardwood where exposure is milder. Sea-facing windows in Torquay take a beating that inland ones do not.
Engineered sections, not single boards
Laminated stiles are more stable than a solid section of the same size, which matters on a tall sash. Fewer of them twist, and the ones we make are less likely to bind in a wet February.
Slim double glazing where allowed
Sealed units down to around 12mm exist and fit into a traditional sash without altering the sightline. Whether you can use them is a conversation with the council, and worth having before you assume single glazing is your only option.
Sash mechanisms that work
Traditional cords and weights, or a spiral balance where the box will not take weights. Both properly balanced to the actual sash weight so the window stays where you put it rather than dropping.
Factory finished before delivery
Primed and topcoated in the workshop, all six faces including the ones that end up against the frame. A window finished on site in Torquay weather is a window with a shorter life.
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- Kitchens & Fitted Furniture
- 200+ Kitchens & Fitted Furniture
- Measured Design Visit
- Free Measured Design Visit
Before You Choose
Choosing A Window Maker For A Period Home
Anyone who works regularly in conservation areas will offer to take a profile off your existing windows without being asked, because it is the difference between a replacement that passes and one that gets refused. If the answer is that they have a standard sash section that suits most period properties, they are not doing this work often.
Be specific about exposure when you talk about timber. Torquay's elevations are not equal: a window on the sea-facing side of a house above Meadfoot is in a completely different environment from one in a sheltered garden in Shiphay. Accoya costs more than engineered softwood and is worth it on exposed elevations. Nobody should be quoting one timber for the whole house without asking which windows face the weather.
Ask what the actual approval position is before you order anything. Being in a conservation area does not automatically mean you need planning permission for like-for-like replacement windows, but it can, particularly where an Article 4 direction is in force - Torbay has two. If the building is listed, you will need listed building consent and that is not optional. Approved Document L asks for 1.4 W/m²K on replacement windows in an existing home, but it also allows an exemption where meeting that would unacceptably alter a historic building's character. Torbay Council's conservation team will tell you where you stand, and it is a free conversation.
Compared
Timber Options, And Why Not uPVC
For a period property in a Torquay conservation area, the choice is usually between timbers rather than between timber and plastic. This is roughly how they compare.
| Accoya | Engineered softwood | Hardwood | uPVC | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Suits exposed sea-facing elevations | Very well | Adequately | Well | Yes, but rarely permitted |
| Movement in humid conditions | Very low | Low | Low to moderate | None, but frames are bulkier |
| Matches an original profile | Yes | Yes | Yes | No, sections are too deep |
| Conservation area acceptability | Normally accepted | Normally accepted | Normally accepted | Often refused |
| Repaintable later | Yes | Yes | Yes | No |
| Typical cost per opening | £1,800 - £9,000 | £1,400 - £5,500 | £1,600 - £7,000 | £600 - £1,800 |
Our Process
How A Torquay Joinery Project Runs
Seven stages, in this order. The one that gets skipped elsewhere is the fourth, and it is the reason a door that shut perfectly in June catches on the frame by February.
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Visit and measured survey
We come to the house or the unit, measure the opening properly, and check what we are fixing into. Lath and plaster, solid stone, a stud wall someone put up in 1985 - it changes the fixings and sometimes the design. We take the diagonals too, because almost nothing in a Victorian villa is square.
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Drawings you sign off
You get a drawn elevation and a plan, with real dimensions on them, before anything is priced as final. Door swings, drawer positions, where the sockets end up. It is much cheaper to move a shelf on paper than after it has been cut.
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Timber selected and priced
We agree the species and the grade, and where it matters we pick the actual boards. Oak with heavy medullary rays looks completely different from quarter-sawn stock. The quote names the timber, the finish and the ironmongery, so you are comparing like with like against anyone else you ask.
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Conditioning in the workshop
The timber sits in the workshop and settles towards the moisture content it will live at. BS EN 942 puts joinery for a house heated to between 12 and 21 degrees at 9 to 13 per cent. Skip this and the piece will do its moving after it is installed, in your hallway, rather than on our racks.
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Machining and dry assembly
Cut, moulded and jointed, then dry-assembled on the bench so we find out about any problem while it is still in our building. Carcasses go together, doors are hung, drawers are fitted and adjusted. Nothing is finished until it has been put together at least once.
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Finishing before delivery
Sprayed, oiled or hand-painted in the workshop, including the backs and the edges you will never see. Sealing five faces and leaving the sixth bare is how a panel takes up moisture unevenly and bows. Finishing off site also means no spray dust through your house.
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Fitting and a snagging visit
Delivered and installed by the people who made it, scribed to the walls on the day. When it is in, we walk it with you and write down anything that needs adjusting. Then we come back once - usually a few months later, after your Torquay winter heating has been on - to ease anything that has moved.
Detail
What Salt Air Actually Does To A Window
Timber windows on the coast do not fail the way people expect. The dramatic version - rot spreading through a frame - is usually the end of a long process rather than the start of one, and it almost always begins at the bottom of the cill or at the joint between the cill and the stile, where water sits rather than runs off.
What accelerates it here is the combination rather than any single factor. Salt is hygroscopic, so a deposit on a painted surface holds moisture against it long after the rain has stopped. Torquay's humidity stays high through spring, so the timber underneath is not drying out either. Add a paint film that has hairline-cracked at a joint and you have a route in that stays permanently damp.
The practical answers are unglamorous. Get the drip groove under the cill right so water leaves the timber instead of tracking back. Seal end grain properly, because that is where a section drinks. Use a microporous finish that lets the timber breathe rather than a hard film that traps moisture behind it once it cracks. And on the elevations that face the sea, spend the extra on accoya, where the modification process largely removes the timber's ability to take up water in the first place.
The same salt-laden air is why we treat external shopfronts around the harbour as a different specification from an inland one.
Reassurance
What We Stand Behind
- Timber moved before it was cut
- Boards come into the workshop and sit there before anything is machined. Cutting a wide oak panel on the day it arrives is how you end up with a door that has cupped by Easter. In a bay where spring humidity runs high, that waiting period is not optional.
- Scribed to your walls, not shimmed to them
- Older Torquay walls are rarely square and almost never plumb. Every fitted piece is scribed to the actual surface on site. If you can see daylight behind a filler strip, the job was measured once and hoped over.
- Ironmongery rated for the job it is doing
- A drawer in a holiday flat gets pulled open forty times a week in August. We fit runners and hinges specified for that, and we tell you which ones we used, so in eight years you can buy the same part rather than replacing a whole unit.
- If it moves, we come back
- Solid timber is a material that responds to the room it lives in, and occasionally something needs easing in its first year. That visit is part of the job, not a callout. Say so and we will book it.
Budget
What Timber Windows & Doors Cost In Torquay
£1,400 – £9,000
per opening, made and fitted
A single casement in engineered softwood sits at the bottom of this range. A tall box sash in accoya with slim double glazing and traditional ironmongery sits at the top. Whole-house quotes are itemised per opening so you can phase the work if you want to.
Guide range only, VAT included. Your figure comes from the measured visit and the drawing you sign off, not from this page.
Full cost breakdownQuestions
Timber Window & Door Questions
- Do I need permission to replace windows in a Torquay conservation area?
- Sometimes. Like-for-like replacement in an unlisted house is often permitted development, but that changes where an Article 4 direction applies - Torbay has two - and where the property is a flat rather than a house. If the building is listed you need listed building consent regardless. Torbay Council's conservation team will confirm your position, and asking costs nothing.
- Can period windows have double glazing?
- Frequently, yes. Slim sealed units of around 12mm fit into a traditionally proportioned sash without spoiling the sightline. On a listed building it depends on the significance of the original glass and on your conservation officer's view. Where double glazing is not acceptable, secondary glazing behind the original sash is usually permitted and performs surprisingly well.
- How long do timber windows last on the coast?
- Well-made and properly finished timber windows on a Torquay elevation should give several decades, and accoya carries a long above-ground warranty from the manufacturer. What decides it is maintenance rather than the timber: a re-coat when the finish starts to dull, rather than when it has cracked, is the whole game. Windows that fail early almost always failed at an unsealed joint.
- Do you repair sash windows as well as replace them?
- Yes, and it is often the better answer. Splicing new timber into a decayed cill, re-cording sashes, easing a sash that binds and replacing failed putty will bring a sound original window back into service for a fraction of a replacement. We will tell you honestly which of your windows are worth repairing and which are past it.
- What about front doors?
- We make entrance doors and frames to match period originals, including panelled doors with the correct stile and rail proportions, and fanlights where there was one. On a Torquay villa the door is usually the most looked-at piece of joinery on the building, and a modern door in an old opening shows immediately.
- Will new windows meet Part L?
- New replacement windows in an existing home should reach 1.4 W/m²K, and our standard double-glazed units do. Approved Document L allows an exemption where compliance would unacceptably alter the character of a historic building, which is the route commonly taken on listed properties and in sensitive conservation areas. We will tell you which category your job falls into before you order.
Feedback
What Customers Say
Rated 5 out of 5
“Our bedroom is in one of the old Warberries villas and the back wall bows by about an inch and a half across four metres. Two national firms measured it, quoted, then went quiet. These came, measured, and said it needed scribing rather than filling. The wardrobes go right into the corner and there is no gap anywhere. My husband keeps running his hand down the join.”
Rated 5 out of 5
“We run a bar on the harbourside and needed the counter and back fittings replaced without losing a summer weekend. They built the lot off site, came in on a Sunday night and had us trading by Tuesday lunchtime. Knowing the whole thing was made before they ever shut our doors is what sold it.”
Rated 5 out of 5
“Sash windows on the front elevation, and we are in a conservation area so it had to be timber and it had to match. They took a profile off the original, made new boxes in accoya, and the planning side went through without a query. From the pavement you genuinely cannot tell which is which.”
Rated 5 out of 5
“Two alcoves either side of the chimney, and they turned out to be 40mm different in width, which explains why the flat-pack ones we tried first never sat right. Made as a pair but to two different sets of measurements. Small thing, but it is the difference between looking fitted and looking bought.”
Rated 5 out of 5
“We let our place out over the season so everything gets hammered. I asked them to over-specify the drawer runners and they did, and told me exactly which ones so I can order spares. Three summers in, nothing has sagged. The last kitchen we had did not last two.”
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Coverage
Where We Work
Most of our work sits inside Torbay, because fitted joinery needs at least two visits and often three. Further out we go as far as the drive stays sensible - Newton Abbot and Totnes are routine, and we have taken work down to the South Hams when the job justified it.
Across Torquay
- Wellswood
- The Warberries
- The Lincombes
- Chelston
- Babbacombe
- St Marychurch
- Cockington
- Shiphay
- Torre
- Ellacombe
- Livermead
- Maidencombe
And across South Devon
- Paignton
- Brixham
- Newton Abbot
- Teignmouth
- Shaldon
- Dawlish
- Totnes
- Kingskerswell
- Marldon
- Galmpton
Or go straight to a service
Send Us A Photo Of The Elevation
The jobs we like most are the ones other people have measured and walked away from. Send a photo and a rough size and we will tell you honestly whether it is worth making, and roughly what it would come to.