Has anyone here used vacuum glass panels?
It appears to last way longer than sealed units and a lot better performance.
My only concerns are how visual the small spacer dots are and the width of the packer.

How long does the gas fill in 2G/3G units last? Even the humblest units rely on argon, let alone the rarer gasses in expensive hi-performance units. The gasses definitely leak out steadily, over some years, even if the units don't 'fail', and you're left with an air-filled unit of just 'significantly better than single pane' performance, but certainly wrecking your BldgRegs let alone PH compliance. Caravan plastic DG units are actually vented to inside, but are still better than single pane.

Your favourite, Partial Pressures, Tony!

As far as air is concerned, an Argon filled unit _is_ a vacuum, that would suck in air even if the argon couldn't get out.

Entropy is just chance, Tom, argon is inert and the atoms can't attract or repel each other

Someone famous put it like this:

"imagine emptying a set of chess pieces from height onto a chess board. What are the chances that the 8 white pawns all land on their 8 correct adjacent starting squares?

"It's unlikely, they're more likely to be jumbled up with other pieces across the board.

"Now do it again with 10^23 chess sets. What are the chances that every one of those 8E23 white pawns (argon atoms) all land on only those 8 squares and nowhere else?"


There's no law that says the squillions of argon atoms in a windows _have_ to diffuse away from each other - the it's just more likely they will do that, than that they all happen to land up in the same place.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy_(statistical_thermodynamics)

For the OP (back to earth!)

Remember reading reviews that the glass vacuum panels are pretty good, dots not visible.

Each piece is cut to size in the factory and vacuum is applied and then the edges of the piece are melted together (welded). So a better seal than on a double glazing unit .

But - because the glass is quite thin - the bypass heat loss path round the edge of the glass through the frame bypassing the glass is quite short - so you get more bridging losses through the frame than you do with DG. Might reduce the attraction.

Also back then it sounded like you had to send measurements off to the factory in Japan to get each pane made to order and sealed, don't know if they make it in UK now?

Posted By: WillInAberdeenBut - because the glass is quite thin - the bypass heat loss path round the edge of the glass through the frame bypassing the glass is quite short - so you get more bridging losses through the frame than you do with DG. Might reduce the attraction.

Presumably you also get greater edge losses because the conductive path is solid glass rather than an insulating seal? No idea about magnitudes.