23rd Aug Sun: Bent PVC

Error, error, error... does not compute John Spartan... you are fined ten credits for an infraction of the keeping it real code

He doesn't care, he just doesn't care...

The freshly fitted 2000mm window is opening and closing, but with a Rogue Traders clunk. A few seconds of inspection revealed the frame of the opening part it's self was bumping on the centre latch plate of the fixed frame.

Breaking out the trusty spirit level, I got this result balancing it between the latch plate in the centre and then the other to the right of it. It's tipping upwards towards the centre

And then this for the centre latchplate to the one on the left, again up towards the centre.

In short, the opening has bowed.

There are two reasons for that. One, the act of closing the window while the foam cured has encouraged the frame to tighten up against the opening part. Secondly, the foam has helped push the frame upwards over the 1200mm span of the opening window.

No problem, easy fix...

Having cut all the foam out under the 1200mm span, I stuck a batten into the opening, pressing down on the latch plate. Reshimmed and squirty foamed the frame. This way, the opening is fixed at the correct dimension until the foam has cured, so it can't bow.

No spiders on this batten, yet... With each one (usually) having eight hands, they might be useful "I'm doing it myself! Dammit!" friends if we can ever cross that bridge

The squirty foam is from the contractor cans. It's really sticky, so it literally glues to the frame and brickwork and it's real tough once it's cured. You can't use it for high load bearings, but it does massively improve bonding on uneven surfaces. The same trick is the reason why most high performance cars or aircraft are as light and strong as they are. Without the foam inside the composite panels, they'd fall apart. With it, they can be near unbreakable. When a load is applied at a finite point, the microscopically perfect binding of the foam will distribute the load throughout the local as soon as the surface (often carbon fibre) starts to bend, rather than letting it concentrate at a point. The foam used in the aerospace industry is the same stuff, PolyUrethane. It's also great because you don't need to measure and cut pieces, you can simply inject it and let it fill a cavity better than any measured piece ever could.

I added a pair of screws around the problem latch plate, they run down into the sill to help prevent the frame warping upwards over time.

And yay, it shall b'eth until the mighty foam hath cured... amen