Are all windows in China drafty?

[Manuel]

Maybe I've been very unlucky but all places I've lived in China have had ridiculously leaky windows. My current apartment has sliding windows and you can literally see the street through some of the gaps between the sliding pane and the frame. The front door isn't any better, it has a rubber seal that seems to have hardened over time and it seals squat. A/C is literally pouring out of my apartment, all window sills are invariably covered in dust within days after cleaning, and mosquitoes have round-the-clock VIP access to my apartment. I'm thinking of sealing the windows with foam insulation strip but then I won't be able to open them...

[eion_padraig]

Hey Manuel,

 

No, I think it's one of those things that gets done poorly just about everywhere. In my experience the apartments I've lived in while in China have all had poor seals on doors and windows. I've lived from both in Shanghai and Guangzhou, which have buildings with almost no insulation so often it's colder inside than outside.

 

Eion

[Manuel]

OK so it's not just me. I guess whoever figures out the seal problem is going to make a lot of money in China!

 

I mean, how hard can it be? My parents' home, which was built 25 years ago, has airtight seals which have not gone hard. And when I say airtight I mean it. I would have though a tight window seal would be the sort of thing homeowners and construction companies would aim for considering the extent of china's dust and pollution problem. Oh well... it's one of those things we laowai will never understand.

[imron]

1 hour ago, Manuel said:

I guess whoever figures out the seal problem is going to make a lot of money in China!

Not as much as the people making the shoddy windows!

[Manuel]

[eion_padraig]

How long have you lived in China? I've lived here a total of 7+ years now, so I've come to expect shoddy work to be the norm. When it's not, it surprises me. The issue is one of 差不多.

A friend of mine who is teaching at an English training center was telling me about how he was spending some time putting up hooks for kids backpacks and hanging up markers out of reach of small kids who would use them to draw on the walls. He said after doing that, he showed the owners how the main sliding door had only been attached by two of 6 bolts meant to hold the thing in place. As he put it to me, one day a kid was going to push it in stead of slide the thing and there would be a catastrophic failure as the whole door fell in on the kid. The owners called the people who installed the door to come back and fix it.

 

Several years back during a school trip, two of the 9th graders were messing around in the hotel room. One pushed the glass shower door as the other one pushed out. The glass door wasn't safety glass, and the glass broke and cut a huge gash down the kid's forearm. Some quick thinking trip leaders applied some towels and direct pressure as the kid was rushed to a nearby hospital. The student ended up getting stitched up and recovering fully, but had the leaders not been able to get the kid to the hospital it's entirely possible the kid would have died. If a hotel had non-safety glass in a hotel room in the US, an incident like that would result in huge financial losses and perhaps end with someone in jail.

 

Eion

[Manuel]

I've lived in China since September  2009, so about the same as you. I've also come to expect  差不多. Recently I took my laptop to the official tech support centre for repair. One of the fans wouldn't stop spinning. I expected they would be able to repair the laptop there and then, but instead I was told the actual repair work would be done at the Suzhou manufacturer's site which would take only 3 weeks. The news made me nervous: based on past experience, sending off expensive gear for repair by an unknown dude in an unknown place is always a terrible idea, more so in China. When it came back they problem was fixed but it had a bunch of scratches all over the back, and a mess of thermal paste around the CPU area. I expressed my disappointment and the fact that I expected the damaged parts to be replaced. The technician's reply: “不影响使用" it doesn't interfere with normal usage. I asked him to call his supervisor. He wasn't there. I asked him to phone him. I'm not sure if he pretended to phone, but the supervisor said they couldn't replace the bits. I asked for his supervisor's number. He said I should contact the manufacturer. Passing the buck huh? Had that been his car, a 1 mm scratch would have escalated to a police matter. I just accepted the scratches and thought "oh well, just use the laptop and get on with life". But when I got home and prepared to install the hard drives, I noticed there was a ribbon cable dangling from the hard drive bay, as well as some deformed plastic due to heating (I don't know what they did there). So now I have to go back, and I suspect they'll suggest I send my laptop away again for an extra 3 weeks of repair-man love rape.

 

Or the asymmetrical bicycle handlebars I got from Taobao. When placed on a flat surface, one side was higher than the other. I tried to explain to the seller that, obviously, handlebars are meant to be symmetrical by design, but the seller kept saying 不影响使用. He also said that the human body is not necessarily perfectly symmetrical, and there was nothing wrong with the product. I filed a dispute and let Taobao mediate. Naturally, the seller won the dispute because Taobao staff were on the same wavelength.

 

I get this 不影响使用 nonsense all the time. Shows the one thing money can't buy in China is quality. Well, at least 99% of the time. Be it product quality, be air quality, customer support quality, etc. There are a few exceptions such as drone maker DJI which makes top-notch products. Hats off to them. I think it's only lack of training. If people were told how to do their job properly none of this would happen. It's just I don't think anyone really knows.

[889]

If you think windows are bad now . . .

 

Up till the very early 90s, Chinese construction seemed to call for wood-frame windows, wood-frame windows that aged quickly and never even made the pretence of a tight fit.

 

Then they started using those pre-fab casement windows in new construction, and also replaced the old wood-frame windows with them. Throughout the country, out with the old and in with the new. Everywhere. Someone must have owned a pre-fab window company. Just as Someone must have owned a white bathroom tile factory at that time.

 

Of course the new pre-fab windows also aged quickly and didn't fit tight. But they did look shiny and new, especially against the white bathroom tile walls. At least for a time.

 

I suspect that bad windows are related to relatively cheap heating. I don't know for sure how heating is charged, but I wouldn't be surprised if large buildings are assessed a flat fee, unrelated to actual steam use. If so, there's not much incentive to keep the windows in good shape.

[Shelley]

Leaky windows are or have been until recently quite normal here in the UK. When I arrived in the mid 70s from Canada I was amazed at the amount of draughty doors and windows in homes and businesses.

We regularly put plastic sheets over the window sealed with gaffa/duck tape round the window in the winter and once it was up it would billow out with the cold air that was now no longer blowing in to the room, the temperature rose noticeably. Doors had a heavy blanket hung over them so you had to fight this heavy thing every time you went in and out.

 

It is getting better but there are still many draughty homes in the UK, there have been many government schemes and other incentives to encourage people to replace windows and doors and insulate their homes.

Of course this causes other problems,  too well insulated homes causes damp, and now people have mouldy homes and are encouraged to open windows when possible, and they are now including airflow in the new windows and doors and new buildings. Damp is one of the most common problems people complain to their landlord about.

 

So you can't win Over seal = damp   Under seal = draughty homes.

We have gradually replace the majority of our windows and we now have an acceptable level of sealed versa over sealed

 

In the winter we have a coal fired central heating system, this is in the living room and by the very nature of how it works it sucks air around the house and out of the chimney so all though it is warm and not draughty we do have air flow, if we sealed the room completely (which would very difficult) the fire would go out or run poorly and we would suffer lack of air as the fire used up all the oxygen, so it needs some air movement.

 

Invest in some plastic sheeting and gaffa tape in the winter and take it down in the summer so you can open the windows, clumsy but it works.

 

[Lumbering Ox]

20 hours ago, Shelley said:

So you can't win Over seal = damp   Under seal = draughty homes.

We have gradually replace the majority of our windows and we now have an acceptable level of sealed versa over sealed

The R2000 program in Canada [insulation... we be cold] IIRC didn't require mechanical ventilation but because of the problems mentioned above now does. Heat recovery system, the cold and warm air spend some time next to each other so some of the outgoing heat gets transfered to the incoming air.

 

I have no idea why R-2000 or more is not code. I guess people would rather pay for heating than pay a bit more up front. Political overlords willing to stand up for a good idea... bah!

 

 

 

[imron]

21 hours ago, 889 said:

I don't know for sure how heating is charged, but I wouldn't be surprised if large buildings are assessed a flat fee, unrelated to actual steam use. If so, there's not much incentive to keep the windows in good shape.

I once knew a foreign architect in China.  He would tell crazy stories about the way things would get built - like the time someone came up to him and told him they'd figured out a way to save 5% on construction costs by reducing the amount of insulation used by the building.  When this architect mentioned that this would significantly increase heating/cooling costs for the complete building he was told "Don't worry, that's not our problem".

[Manuel]

Quote

"Don't worry, that's not our problem".

 

It's scary how many things that explains.

 

Regarding over-insulation and damp, it's true but if you had good windows at least you'd have the option of deciding when you want a draft. My flat has windows on both the north and south faces. For some reason the pressure on the north face is lower and air constantly gets sucked in from the south, like a vacuum cleaner, and I live inside the dustbag. The howling on the windows is quite eerie, too. I guess never mind: two days ago my landlord broke it to me that he wants to sell the flat and I'm being politely asked to leave as soon as possible (even though I have no legal obligation as per the tenancy agreement). Yet all the various little niggles that afflict my flat are much easier to bear than the pain of the initial spring-clean that the next flat will inevitably be in desperate need of. But, who knows, it may have nicer windows!