Systematic investigations of decay in window joinery in Sweden have not been undertaken until very recently. One might guess that one of the reasons for the minor interest is that this type of joinery did not rot strikingly faster than people expected. In the last 10-15 years, however, house owners, tenantowners, building societies and others have repeatedly argued that windows do rot more than in earlier days. As long as reliable figures supporting these complaints were not presented, only little attention was shown by the house-building industry and the authorities responsible for the building sector. Finally, 1974, Sveriges Allmännyttiga Bostadföretag (SABO), one of the major public building societies in Sweden, with financial support from the Building Research Council, started a special investigation of their dwellings with regard to rotting window joinery. When the results of this investigation was presented in September 1975, the magnitude of the problem became apparent and further investigations were immediately started.

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