A former customer in Ashford asked me to look at an aluminium window that would no longer lock. “Sure, no problem,” I said. As usual, that little bit of overconfidence came back to bite me.
Once on site, I removed the mechanism and confirmed that it was broken and needed replacing. At first I thought it would be straightforward because I carry plenty of offset window mechanisms. Apart from being offset, however, almost none of the dimensions on this one were standard.
The locking rollers sat unusually low and were very narrow in diameter, so nothing I had in stock would fit. I secured the window shut temporarily while I searched for something close enough to work. A few days later I found a mechanism with the right roller height, which at least gave me a realistic chance of getting it past the frame and closing the window.
Of course, there was another problem. The replacement rollers were considerably wider than the originals and the keeps supplied with the mechanism would not fit the existing frame. I ended up carefully filing the original keeps so the wider rollers could travel through them cleanly.
It took plenty of problem-solving, but the repair worked. The window lost its vent position because of the limitations of the replacement mechanism, but it could once again shut and lock properly. The alternatives would have been replacing the whole window or permanently blocking it shut, so retaining a working, lockable window was by far the better result for the customer.
