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Narrator>> The Palace of Westminster is home to one of the busiest parliamentary institutions
in the world. Thousands of people work here and visit every day and millions of tourists
are drawn to its iconic splendour. Completed in the mid 1800's, many of the Palace's
features have never undergone major renovation. So what being done to tackle any problems,
not only to ensure the Palace continues to function as a working building, but also to
preserve its unique heritage for future generations? In this video we look at the windows of the
Palace. There are 3000 windows, from basic casements in rooms and corridors, to the ornate
glass panels that allow light to flood into the many hallways and chambers. This vast
expanse of glass, much of it set in bronze framework no longer provides effective weather
resistance and generates significant heat loss from the Palace.
While a range of measures to reduce CO2 emissions are being implemented, the Palace's status
as part of a world heritage site and grade one listed building, means that many energy
saving solutions are not appropriate. However making windows weather tight across the entire
Palace will go a significant way towards reducing heat loss and running costs.
Tessa Blundy>> You can see from here the significance of the windows in these building elevations
of the Palace of Westminster, not one of them actually closes properly. Every single one
of these windows needs to be taken out and overhauled in order that it stops letting
heat out of the building and letting the water in. These windows inevitably have deteriorated
over time far more quickly than we can maintain or repair them. I can feel here the draft
coming through the bottoms of the windows, this is a problem throughout the 3000 windows
all over the Palace. If we can overhaul all of these windows and draft proof them, we
will go a very, very long way to reducing the carbon footprint of the whole Palace.
Of course that means saving an awful lot on heating costs.
Every single window needs to be surveyed in detail by specialist contractors, taken to
a workshop, overhauled, some of its components replaced, brought back and re-fixed into the
stonework. Apart from that we have the problems with access, physically getting to the windows
in order to remove them, some of them are in very sensitive places where we can't
be working during parliamentary sitting times and so the whole of the programme of window
repair will at the current rate take very many years to complete.
If we don't look after this building, if we don't do something about the state of
the stonework, the timber, the windows, it will not be here for future generations, quite
apart from the fact it may not be fit for purpose very soon for the use for which it
was designed. Narrator>> To find out more, please watch
the other videos in this series.