A WINDOW OPENS

 

Spent my afternoon watching cricket, women's club cricket to be exact. Quite a high standard and lots of fun. Notice All Saints Church in the background. The bells were ringing for quite a while too. How English can you get?

 Did I mention the draft beer?

 

 

Change of focus because of "reasons" I'm returning to the sash window families I created several years ago during Project Soane. I was quite proud of them at the time, and they have done good service, but there are lots of issues.

Time to step up to the next level. As usual I am taking a modular approach. More variations with less effort. First nested component is called VOID. It's a complex shape and can be swapped out with other variants. In this case there is allowance for a stone sill extending sideways under brick reveals and deep enough to sit under the window frame. It's a walk hosted family with 3 separate voids.

Second component is called FRAME. It's simplified, but it will do for now. Solid sill, weight boxes at the sides, open head, staff bead round all 4 sides. To improve would mean notching out some of the extrusions where they overlap. That can come later.

The fourth image is a Revit project file. Here I collect component variants, plus fully assembled window families. You will notice examples of the nested item called SASH.

 

Last night I went with a close family member to watch a Black Sabbath tribute band. The venue is less than ten minutes walk from my place. What a privelege. I never was a big Sabbath fan, but live music is always a couple of notches above the recorded item, especially in small intimate venues where you can have a drink with a friend.

Earlier in the day I changed the mattress set up on the day bed that I am using in my flat. Out go the two thin items that belong to the frame. In theory, they allowed switching between bed and sofa. In practice that never happened. Too much hassle. So I'm going for a single, thicker mattress and gaining a few inches back into the room. Hopefully the sore chest-muscle issues I've been having since I left Dubai will fade away.

 

Further feedback on my Sash Windows study. I have set up a sheet to get a solid overview of progress. The situation I know best from my own experience is a late Victorian /Edwardian version as found in terraced housing in the north of England.

Nine inch walls (one brick) with internal lime plaster and red face-brick externally. Box frame set into brick reveals and finished with architraves and window board (sill) internally. Usually stone sills externally, full thickness of the wall with stooled ends to support the outer brick leaf.

The box frame is closed at the sides to contain the cast iron counterweights but open at the top. The head could be a flat arch or gently curved, or a stone lintel. Yet to develop these options. I do have a variant from Project Soane, meaning Georgian era. The wall is usually thicker and plastered externally often with classical mouldings.

I will come back to the Soane types once I am happy with the later version, it's constraints and parameters, linked nested components, ease of use and stability. Fairly happy, let's say.