+1, another angle is to not double glaze rooms that are not generally lived in: storage room, bath room, etc. Or not to double glaze rooms that won't affect heating and cooling as much. However would these windows and doors different between double glazing and single glazing annoy you visually? Another consideration to double glaze now is that cost is minute compared with the whole house build cost, and you will have to pay a fair bit more in the future to get the rest removed and double glazed. I have all windows and doors for an old house double glazed with uPVC frame, and am pretty with them. Previously, when I was in an apartment next to a major road, only the bed rooms were doors were replaced with double glazing doors for noise reason.

If there are a number of large windows and glass doors on the road side, double glazing definitely helps. Use the glasses with different thickness and largest possible air gap in the middle to maximise noise dampening. We used to live on Princes Highway near traffic light which has quite a traffic all day long: tire noise, engine noise, and truck breaking noise. At night everything is a lot more audible. We retrofitted bed rooms sliding doors for the apartment with uPVC frame double glazed door and that was a big different. Don't go the route of clip on product, like Magnetite. They don't work as well as a proper double glazed windows and doors.

If the front of the house is west facing in Queensland and you have glass on that side of the house, in summer in the afternoon the sun beats down on this side for hours, heating up the whole house. There is some speculation on double glazing as some think that they do heat up, better than nothing. Once the sun hits the wall you are lost. These image are for north this is worst for west. A more passive means of cooling the house is to install tall enough thick leaves to the base trees on the western side so that they shade that elevation. Problem with that is that in winter, that sun would be nice. So you need trees that drop their leaves early winter and have them back on say September when the sun starts to heat up. Some trees hold onto their leaves till a few weeks before spring, so make sure you do your research and think root barrier up front to protect your footings. Photo below horizontal external shade screens, Another method is to shade the house with screens, i said house not windows. With western sun, it is low when it starts to clear the roof overhangs, so no amount of horizontal shade devices will make any real difference. The screens for western sun in Queensland must be of a vertical nature. So screens that hang OUTSIDE the house to around say 900 mm off the ground would be fantastic. Since the sun travels around the west from more south west in peak summer to west in winter, vertical blades tend to be ideal solution and should pivot, to deal with this moving sun. In the past, Queenslanders used to have these vertical screens on castors and they moved them around to suit the conditions, for some reason we did not learn from the past. This house the screens are not shading the walls at the bottom so they would still heat up. From the plans i see you are building in brick, so western sun and bricks in summer make an ideal oven. Takes bricks 12 hours to cool down depending on the colour. All material heats up in the sun, but bricks take longer to cool, light weight material which is properly insulated is a better choice and against popular opinion, glass is also a good choice, all better if vertically screened. Double brick tends to keep a house cooler and you might as well use the double brick for structure instead of the decorative nature of cavity brick house, but after a while that heats up and takes forever to cool. Studs hold up the roof, not the face bricks. Ever wonder why the house stands up during construction with stud wall and roof? Photo is vertical blades which pivot. A good landscape architect would be worth a look and they will know how to blend your style of house with the garden. North windows in Queensland even with no overhangs, (which is stupid in Queensland) do not get sun into the rooms, but in winter it might crawl in say 2 M which is nice. What are you doing with the roof and concrete tiles heat up nicely and the darker you make them the hotter they get, Colorbond is a good choice with all the hail we tend to get, or keep a stockpile of tiles for when they break. Colour also makes a difference to heat. Make sure you vent the roof space, whirly birds, and vented eaves or gable ends, make sure you fully insulate the roof and also ceiling, and choose a light colour. choose a style of external screens or trees to fit the house. See if that makes a difference to the report which is there to make your life better and we are talking the cost of air con for the life of the house, the reports are there to help save you money, maybe a bit more up front but worth it in the long running cost of a house. Ros

Hi Wendan, we recently got double glazing installed to replace large sliding doors and windows. In some cases some noise is now more noticeable. I queried the installer and he said it happens a bit. The glass changes the type of noise that enters the house due to frequency. For example, I almost never hear our neighbours loud TV any more, but sometimes notice low pitch traffic noise from further away (less ambient noise to dull the hum). There is apparently specific double glazing for noise reduction, which wasn't something we considered when we were retrofitting, but possibly would've been good to know (two points in the house seem to be more affected by this, rather than the whole place). The other thing I'll mention is the frames. After lots of research we decided to get sliding units, essentially replacing like for like style. We had trouble trying to work out why casement style provided better thermal properties, other than being told the seal is better. The main difference now appears to be in the design/manufacture. Casements come as a complete unit, no gaps in the frame. Sliders come in two pieces with windows inserted into the frame in situ. This results in small air gaps between the frame and window due to the need for wiggle room. Annoying that we didn't find this out until after the event, seems like a bit of a flaw. Overall though, the glazing seems better than the almost 30yo bog standard stuff we previously had. Looking forward to summer with low-e glass and hopefully less heat entering the house.