REHAU Windows chosen for remote island homes in Jersey

REHAU windows chosen for remote island holiday home

When fitting replacement windows, each job is different and presents installers with unique challenges to overcome. This was certainly true of a series of PVC-U window installations in Jersey, where experienced installer Alan Gicquel needed to swap his van for a boat in order to replace the timber framed windows for three remote island properties.

Les Ecrehous is a small archipelago of islets located six miles off the north east coast of Jersey, and just eight miles from mainland France. Declared a RAMSAR site in 2005 to protect the habitat of the many species of birds and marine life that live there, the islands themselves are also home to a handful of houses.

The island houses are former fishermen’s cottages now used as holiday homes, but their unforgiving sea location means that maintaining the properties throughout the year can be challenging.

Over the last 15 years, Jersey installer Alan Gicquel has replaced the windows in all but one of the properties that stand on Les Ecrehous, changing the old timber frames for new PVC-U alternatives from REHAU.

Alan said: “The holiday cottages on the islands are in a fantastic location, surrounded by picturesque scenery, great fishing waters and an abundance of wildlife. However, because they are in the middle of the open water, the homes are constantly being battered by corrosive seawater and winds and this makes them difficult to maintain, especially during the winter when they aren’t occupied.

“The windows in particular suffer from exposure to the elements, and in winter they are actually boarded up to protect them.”

Alan has been fitting REHAU PVC-U windows since 1983, so when the residents from Les Ecrehous approached him about upgrading their windows to something which would be cost effective, easy to maintain and hard wearing against the elements, he knew he had a good product to fit the bill.

Alan continues: “We started on one of the smaller houses first, just replacing three windows and a door, and this led to a bigger assignment working on the adjacent house to replace 12 windows. A few years later, we were then called back to the islands to do a third property. By this time, REHAU had launched its TOTAL70 profile, which is an easy swap for old timber frames because of the 70mm width.”

The challenge of replacing the windows wasn’t so much with the properties themselves, more getting to them. Alan and his team needed to get a boat to the islands, balancing the material load securely and then getting the profiles and the glass up the stony beach and rocks to the houses.

Alan said: “The glass, sealed units were the biggest challenge as we couldn’t put them down anywhere until we got into the house. We also needed to plan the job really carefully, making sure we hadn’t forgotten anything because for the larger jobs, we had to stay on the island while we completed the job over a number of days.

“All in all, the Les Ecrehous installations have been our most challenging to date purely due to the logistics, but they have also been the most satisfying and we are very proud to have been a part of the preservation of this very unique corner of Jersey’s landscape.”

Mark Collins, Area Sales Manager, from REHAU said: “We understand that no two jobs are the same, which is why we have developed a portfolio of products to ensure that installers always have a selection of profiles and options to hand to meet their customers’ individual needs. However, with the Les Ecrehous installations, the choice of profile was probably the most straightforward element of the whole job! Hat’s off to Alan and his team for going the extra mile to bring REHAU’s high quality windows to even the most remote of customers.”