Becker Curtain Walling
Ok I lied, I said earlier that I wasn’t here to promote any one company – but here goes Becker & Sohn or www.becker-team.de were our German glazing contractors that fitted all our curtain walling, sliding folding doors, sliding doors, windows and triple glazing – and the were simply brilliant. They build Passiv haus houses as well offering turn key solutions that you don’t need to worry about – like so many of the German contractors that have graced our TV screens over the last few years of Grand Design TV programmes and the like, the guys from Becker were fun and refreshing to work with and maintained an impeccable, fanatical attention to detail.
One day during a Building Control visit, myself and my friendly officer, couldn’t believe our eyes that a special routing tool was being used to remove an excess silicone material from around the edges of our large Oak frames, to a specific depth, only to be replaced by another material that was infinitely better at sealing against any air leakage. Not surprising that the same company was chosen to put all the bomb proof windows in the new Scottish parliament building.
They really were a tremendous team, we only had three guys to off-load and install pre-made sections of curtain walling 3m wide by 7m in height – the weather conditions again were incredibly windy and wet, and yet they completed ahead of schedule, and they never seem to break into a sweat.
In 2005 we really struggled to locate any company capable of manufacturing not only triple glazed units but curtain walling sections that had the same U-value as the centre pane of glass. Absolutely no point installing triple glazed units if the frames they are fitted into are leaky or have a lower U-value. Becker used the Raico THERM + H Passiv house curtain walling system where the frame is thermally broken and achieves the same U=0.7W/m2K that the triple glazed argon filled units achieve.