On a self build the glazing decision is made twelve to eighteen months before anyone looks through the glass. Getting aluclad right is mostly about sequencing.
Self builders choose aluclad more often than any other client group, and the reasons are consistent: they are building to a thermal standard, they have chosen the internal materials carefully, and they do not intend to maintain the house on a ladder in twenty years.
The specification itself is straightforward. The programme is where projects come unstuck.
Before the structural design is fixed. Aluclad timber sections are deeper than aluminium, which affects reveal depth, cavity closer detail and the position of the frame within the wall build-up. Those are cheap decisions on paper and expensive ones in blockwork.
On a self build built to current or better fabric standards, triple is usually the right call — not primarily for the U-value on a spreadsheet, but for the comfort of sitting next to a large pane in January and the acoustic difference in a rural setting at 3am.
Every opening on a self build should be decided individually. It is the one project type where nobody is inheriting someone else's compromises, and the one where a standard-across-the-house approach is most obviously a waste.
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