- Climate - If your window faces south, it will be subject to direct sunlight for a lot of the day. This tends to cause the sealed unit to fail more quickly – a south-facing window may last between 10-25 years. This is because the spacer bars will twist as the temperature rises and causes the adhesive holding them together to eventually fail.
- Moisture - Windows in kitchens and bathrooms tend to fail more quickly because they come into contact with moisture more often. For example, if water gets on your windowsill when you shower, the seal around the glass will come loose more quickly if it’s constantly wet.
Dunbeath
Dunbeath is a town in south-east Caithness, Scotland on the A9 road. It was the birth place of Neil M. Gunn (1891-1973), writer of The Silver Darlings, Highland River and so on, most of whose novels are set in Dunbeath and its Strath. Dunbeath has a really rich archaeological landscape, the site of various Iron Age brochs and a very early medieval reclusive site (see Alex Morrison's archaeological survey, "Dunbeath: A Cultural Landscape".) Of Dunbeath's landscape, Gunn composed: "These small straths, like the Strath of Dunbeath, have this intimate charm. In boyhood we are familiar with every square backyard of it. We encompass it physically as well as our memories hold it. Birches, hazel trees for nutting, pools with trout and a sometimes visible salmon, river-flats with the wind on the bracken and vanishing rabbit scuts, a riches of wild blossom as well as little bird life, the rising hawk, the unforeseen roe, the ancient graveyard, thoughts of the people who once lived far inland in straths as well as hollows, the past as well as today held in a minute of day-dream." ('My Little Britain', 1941.). There is a neighborhood museum/landscape analysis centre at the old town institution.