Make your windows last twice as long in Berwick: the maintenance schedule
Two hours twice a year is the whole trick. Clear the weep holes and vacuum the tracks each season, wash the frames with mild detergent, lubricate with dry silicone rather than oil, and re-silicone the perimeter every 10 to 15 years. Do that and a powder-coated aluminium window runs 25 to 40 years instead of giving trouble at 15. Skip it and you buy $180 to $480 of reveal make-good per window, $180 to $350 of rollers, and eventually a $1,800 to $3,500 door. The full schedule is below, printable, sorted by how often each job comes around.
Windows in the City of Casey do not fail from age so much as from four local conditions, all of which are cheap to manage and expensive to ignore.
What actually wears windows out around here
Reactive clay. Much of Casey sits on clay that swells in winter and shrinks through a dry summer, which is why site classifications across the corridor are commonly in the moderate to highly reactive range. The house moves with it, frames rack a millimetre or two, and a slider that ran perfectly in September starts binding in February. That is not a broken door, it is a seasonal adjustment, and forcing it is what destroys the rollers.
Tree litter and estate dust. The mature gums through older Berwick and along the creek reserves drop leaf, bark and seed pods straight into sliding tracks and weep holes. In the newer estates around Cranbourne East and Clyde North the equivalent is fine construction sand, which is abrasive and grinds rollers down in three or four years instead of ten.
Cold, damp winters. On a Berwick winter morning the inside face of a single pane sits at roughly 3 to 6°C, well under the dew point of the air in a heated room, so moisture condenses, runs down the frame and soaks into the reveal. Left alone for a couple of winters that becomes mould and soft timber. It is the single most common thing we are called about in Endeavour Hills and Cranbourne.
UV and splash, not salt. Berwick is far enough inland that salt corrosion is not the enemy it is at the bay. What does the damage here is ultraviolet on north and west elevations, which chalks a powder coat over 15 to 25 years, plus render, mortar and concrete splash on glass during renovations. Melbourne water is soft, so hard-water scale is rarely the culprit when glass looks etched: it is usually cement wash or sprinkler overspray that was left to dry.
The printable window maintenance schedule
Grouped by how often each job comes around. Items marked PRO are the ones worth paying for. Ticks save in your browser, and the print button gives you a clean copy for the shed door.
After every storm or big wind event
Every season, about 20 minutes a window
Once a year, before winter
Every few years
Never do these
What neglect actually costs, in dollars
Blocked weep holes are the cheapest mistake to make and one of the dearer ones to fix. Clearing them costs nothing. Leaving them for two wet winters puts water into the reveal and the architrave, and make-good is $180 to $480 a window plus $150 to $400 if mould has taken hold in the plaster. Multiply by the four openings on a west wall and you have spent $2,000 avoiding a ten minute job.
Grit in a sliding track is the same story on a bigger scale. Vacuuming is free, rollers are $180 to $350, and a track that has been ground out by roller carriages running on dirt cannot be repaired: that is a new door at $1,800 to $3,500, or $3,500 to $6,500 for a three-panel unit. On an unpainted timber sill, $80 of paint every 8 to 12 years stands between you and a $350 to $900 sill repair, and then a $1,200 to $2,400 sash once the fixings no longer hold. Nothing on this page is more profitable than the boring version.
The service life you should actually expect
Powder-coated aluminium frames run 25 to 40 years, with the coating chalking somewhere between 15 and 25 on the sun-facing elevations. Timber windows outlast them, 30 to 60 years and beyond, but only with a repaint every 8 to 12 years: miss two cycles and they are finished at 20. Sealed double-glazed units carry 10 to 20 year seal warranties and generally reach it. Wool pile and gaskets are consumables at 8 to 15 years, rollers at 7 to 12, perimeter silicone at 10 to 15, and flyscreen mesh at 8 to 12. Frame warranties on tier-one Australian systems run 7 to 10 years, so the maintenance schedule above is what carries the window through the other 20.
What voids the manufacturer warranty
Read your warranty sheet, because they are more specific than people expect. The recurring exclusions are abrasive or solvent cleaners on the powder coat; pressure washing; sealing or painting over weep holes; screwing security doors, screens or fittings into the frame outside the approved locations; aftermarket film on double glazing, which can cause thermal stress in the glass and almost always kills the sealed unit warranty; and failure to wash the frames at the interval the maker specifies. That last one surprises people, but coating warranties are written around a cleaning schedule, and the schedule is stricter in coastal and industrial areas than it is here.
Want the annual service done for you?
A full house of sliders, awnings and hardware checked, cleaned, adjusted and lubricated in one visit, with a written condition note on every opening.
When maintenance is no longer the answer
We would rather sell you a $250 service than a $20,000 re-window you do not need, and most houses we look at need the service. But there is a point where the money stops working. When the powder coat is chalky enough to mark your hand, when the welded corners have opened and you can see daylight, when a timber sill crumbles under a screwdriver, or when the same slider has been re-rollered twice in four years because the track is gone, servicing is just delaying the invoice. The honest markers for that are set out on our signs you need new windows page, and the replacement numbers are on our 2026 pricing page.
Chronic condensation is the other one worth being straight about. If one bedroom fogs up every winter, the cheap fix is ventilation and a fan, not glass. If the whole house runs wet and there is mould in three reveals, no amount of wiping solves it, and the choice is between retrofit double glazing at $700 to $1,200 an opening and full replacement at $880 to $2,400 a window. We compare those two honestly on our retrofit versus replacement page.
A few things we do not do, so nobody wastes a phone call: we do not clean windows as a service, we do not repair roller shutters or plantation shutters, and we do not service commercial or owners corporation glazing. What we do is measure, supply and install windows and doors across the City of Casey, and service what we and others have installed. If something has already broken, start with our emergency window page, and if it was storm or impact damage keep your maintenance photos, because they are exactly the evidence an insurer asks for on the claim side of things.
Window maintenance questions we get asked
How often do windows need servicing in Berwick?
How long should aluminium windows last in the City of Casey?
What blocks the weep holes and why does it matter?
Can I pressure wash my windows and frames?
What voids a window manufacturer warranty?
Is servicing an old window worth it, or should I replace it?
Book a window and sliding-door service, or price the replacement
Tell us how many openings and what is playing up, and we will come back with a fixed service price or a replacement quote, usually within one business day.
Not sure whether to service it or replace it?
Send a photo of the worst window. We will tell you which one it is, and what each option costs.