Funny you should ask this. Our previous house was, how shall I put it, a bit quirky, and the designer used glass doors as windows in several places. We had to have railings installed, since there was a rather substantial drop if you fell out, but they gave great cross breezes and views. I'll try to attach a link. The doors/windows are in the lounge and study.

http://www.realestate.com.au/property-house-nsw-bermagui-117926251

Do you have any pictures of the doors lil?

Gioenne - I'll grab some photos tomorrow and post them up

jmm1837 - thanks for this I've had a look at the photos!

I designed and built a house in 1991 that used 4 sliding doors as windows.

Worked well as windows only but less well as doors. . .

The door we used 2-3 times daily suffered wear on the wheels after about 3 years use and bad track wear after about 9 years.

Sorry no good pictures as before digital cameras

If you look at the pictures on the link I provided, the first one shows the front view of the house with 2 door/windows, one on the front of the house, and one on the side, both lining up with actual windows. There were also another door/window at the other end of the sidewall, one at the back of the house (you can see both from the inside in the lounge picture) and one downstairs in the study, so five in all. As you can tell, ours were installed at floor level, but if I'd had it to do over again, I might have raised them a bit. I don't think there's any visual jarring from the difference between doors and actual windows - the frames were pretty similar. The only issue was the council requirement for a safety barricade 1 m in height to protect us from falling out! We had a rail with stainless steel wire strung across each of the openings. Oh, and they all had screens. Hope this helps.

Well lil you have a deck there so you may not need to address the safety barricade issue. It would be great to be able to use them but...

Aesthetically this is the front of your house so can you use them for the glass only & remove the horizontal safety pattern too?

Maybe reconfigure them into taller doors or windows with a timber frame custom made to increase their total height to suit you.

The aluminium frame will have holes where the door handle goes & I'm not sure about the technical side & it could be a silly idea but two sets of three separately hinged glass windows that open to the deck could work set higher up on the wall???

My thoughts are based on your location & the difficulty of getting custom anything but if you are handy or someone local has the skills to do timber frames it might look better as hinged doors.

As long as they are placed higher on the wall and you can open them to let the breeze through, and they're not too heavy for that purpose, it could work.

I don't think they will be all that successful, they will be much heavier to slide than a window - I think you will still need a handle on them but having the handle lower will disturb the balance making the door even harder to open. Weird they are only 6'3" high though - must have been a special order and why you got them so cheap.

I have a 9' ceiling with standard sliding doors and don't have a problem with the amount of light let in.

One aspect with doors a builder warned me about is that while they can be opened wide to allow great breezes in, they are hopeless in bad weather. Heavy rain will even bounce in from the ground. No matter how you use them, I would be inclined to put a bank of louvers between the two doors, so you always have ventilation regardless of the weather.

Windows are placed higher on a wall so the tops come up to the eaves and it is not necessary to put brickwork above them.

When building we installed french doors with side windows. After many years we had two change the doors and replaced them with the sliding ones - there are four sections and two inner ones slider over the two outer ones. I was originally a bit worried that with no windows we will not get enough fresh air as we have no other windows in that room, and I love fresh air. But the sliding doors do a very good job of ventilating the room when needed.

yes you could install them higher, it could actaully have quite a postive effect. alternatively you could install normal ground height and then a ribbon of windows on top of that. do you have or will you ever have an outdoor area out this side??? that will really be the deciding factor i think as you would want good flow.

By all mean have them installed, think of the fantastic view they will give you and also the breeze effect you will have, if you have them installed just a bit higher up the wall no one can assume they are doors to use as you say you already have a door that you will be able to use in the same area, you cannot go wrong. Good luck.

A sliding door is just a big window, and if correctly built in (check if the glass is the correct sized for the door if a bit old) with the correct sized lintels this should not be a big problem as the loads would be transferred to the sides, allowing the door to slide easily. Silicon spray (being a Yachtie were we use this stuff everywhere), we now use silicone spray on all our windows in our 1930 home and the windows glide across with one finger before they used to tilt when trying to open them.

I would place the door head up to line up with the others and one thing you might consider is placing a window seat, (rebate the bottom channels into the window seat) and have the window seat in and out, place a cushion over the entire seat, should be fantastic and if the deck is built, than no balustrade is required. If it is a stacker slider, i would do the seat for the entire length.

So instead of looking a bit funny they will think it was supposed to be like that. We should all think outside the square more often.

RAM

sell the doors and buy windows - no one will care in future that you obtained them for free - they will just see doors that don't fulfil their function or look as attractive as windows would. it will be the sort of quirk that will annoy potential purchasers and then they will start looking for other problems and it will annoy you too. buy the right windows on line to save money.

A huge thank you to everyone for taking the time to reply. Certainly a lot great advice in here and I'm glad to have heard all the differing opinions!
Decision time..!

I agree with Chloeviolet re selling the doors, i take it you have at least one sliding door correct size onto the deck if not than that would be a mistake. The other one can be for window seat, and in the scheme of things, these can be easily taken out and replaced down the track. You also have to add to the cost the material under the window which you have to build in, where a full length door does not require this. So check with a builder on costs for both buying new and installing these.

Even though i love booth seats when dining out, it restricts the options for change, to design a booth seating correctly the table edge and seat edge need to line up. If you get this wrong it is impossible to use to eat off, getting in and out is difficult for anyone who needs to slide the chairs out to get up and the end diner has to get up if some hemmed in has to leave. If a family member is on the larger side of life this might be too close and kids might find it too big. In a family situation normally a free standing arrangement works better, if this was a breakfast nook sure thing.

Could not agree more marcros, I find any form of booth seating anywhere extremely uncomfortable. You just can't get the same back support as sitting in an individual chair.

We've had shortened sliding doors as our wrap around kitchen windows for 20+ years. We angle ground the huge handles back to the block with the just the locking mechanism remaining. We also installed sliding fly screens so the whole room can open up like a servery. Being able to pass things outside is awesome. Best feature of our house. They don't look like doors and even when we tell people they don't believe us. One is over 4.0 metres wide. Go with it.