Designer Home Window Schedule Checklist

• In a designer home plan
  • A window schedule comes late in the design and drafting enterprise.
  • Dust-ups of all sorts should be settled before the window schedule shows up on the flat-screen monitor, including but not limited to . . . . 
    • Apparent structure
    • Balance
    • Cross-ventilation
    • Daylighting
    • Décor
    • Emergency egress
    • Fit
    • Focality
    • Function
    • Glare
    • Header height
    • Heat build
    • Lines of sight
    • Maintenance
    • Mechanical exhaust venting
    • Overhang
    • Over-window feature
    • Privacy
    • Proportion
    • Regulating lines
    • Safety
    • Security
    • Sill clearance to surface below
    • Sill height
    • Style in-keeping
    • Symmetry
    • Trim
    • Type
    • UV intrusion
    • Weather
    • Whimsy
    • And so forth

 WHAT ABOUT THE WINDOW SCHEDULE?

• Expect a lot of answers from a window schedule:
  • How many windows?
    • By level or
    • By type
    • Etc.
  • What types of windows?
    • Casement
    • Fixed, or picture
    • Double-hung
    • Cottage style
    • Awning
    • Glider
    • Bay
    • Hopper
    • Skylight
    • Sidelight
    • Transom
    • Roof dormer
    • Wall dormer
    • Clerestory
    • Etc.
  • What dimensions are the windows?
    • Always in inches
      • Width first
      • Height second
    • Referencing rough or masonry opening
  • What spaces get which windows?
    • Usually also identified at least in the floor plans
    • Sometime identified in elevations
  • Mullion or mull?

Comment:  In this home designer’s opinion, a mulled window should be avoided in virtually all designing - diminishes, depreciates most styles and a frame can distort for insufficient window structure when mulled

• Tempered or otherwise glaze-amended?
  • Always tempered in  
    • Child’s play,
    • Child’s study, and
    • Child’s bedroom
    • Emergency egress 
    • Bathroom
    • Recreation
    • Subject to physical damage, e.g., out-swinging casement to veranda or similar
• Consider amendments in high-heat and UV build
• Consider amendments in glare lines of sight, especially in travel-sensitive areas, e.g., stairways, active traffic pattern interchanges, etc.
• Manufacturer?
  • Pick a manufacture if at all possible and
  • Stick with ‘em throughout a draw
    • By client’s stated preference
    • Or, failing that, then by designer preference

Comment:  Remember to site by window centerlines to avoid misplacing for differences in window widths between manufacturers 

Comment:  Before The Architect usually applies Marvin Integrity windows –

     Pros - Excellent reputation with clients in before- and after-market, excellent manufacturing reputation, benchmark durability and convenience of pultrusion manufacturing process. 

     Cons - Selectively limited product line; no true custom option. 

          Note: 1. While woefully lacking in transom alternatives in the Marvin Integrity line, there appears to be a workaround via Parrett Manufacturing Company, Inc., 810 Second Avenue East, P. O. Box 440, Dorchester, WI 54425-0440, PH=715-654-6444, FX=715-654-6555, http://www.parrettwindows.com; 2. At least one Marvin dealer – in Nashville, TN – offers custom options for muntins – especially notable in re Victorian and Craftsman Styles. 

Comment:  Note well that as far as Before The Architect knows, no two window manufacturers make windows in exactly the same sizes.  Therefore, what could end up as windows in the final construct might well be different from those designed. 

• What to do? 
  • Identify each window applied by manufacturer (usually an omnibus statement, e.g., Window callouts are Marvin Integrity, Warroad, MN;
  • Dimension individual windows or a mulled group [yuk] on their centerlines in order to support (slightly) different widths within a design gone to construction;
  • Do the best you can in substantially (and consistently) offsetting windows from joints to crossing walls….This home designer prefers 8 linear inches minimum rough-to-rough, unless style and client point to substantially narrower or wider casings or crossing wall treatment as in deeply-moulded wainscot.
• Model?
  • Again, pick one-three for common applications and stick to 'em
  • See above in re Manufacturer
• Where on a wall shall the windows be set?
  • Depends
    • Lines of sight between entrance and outside for depth and drama, e.g., on a diagonal, to far corners, etc.
    • Lines of light between entrance and outside
    • Secondarily, daylighting to other spaces, e.g., straight or nearly straight across so as to secondarily daylight a hallway
    • Lines of light and sight relative to specific, in-space function(s), e.g., where the bed or other furniture is to be sited, a window seat, etc.
    • Style
    • Overhang
    • Proportion
    • Exterior regulating lines
    • Interior symmetry
    • Exterior symmetry
    • Physical safety, including but not limited to  
    • Child’s play area and similar
    • Glare
    • Security
    • Privacy

Comment:  Window height is best defined as the vertical distance between finish floor top of face and rough sill top of face, thereby compensating even for significant build in a floor as may arise in thick-bed finish clad masonry

• Window placement on the horizontal
• On centerline
• Particularly in Period Styles, though not necessarily to the exclusion of “community" styles and the like, the days of single-height headers seem gratefully fewer as time passes
• If casements, which way shall they open?
  • The sideways “v" points to the hinge, or trailing stile
  • Generally, open to 
    • Interior corners
    • Less noisy or sensorially objectionable direction
  • Give it up to distinguishing between left-hand and right-hand – almost as subjective as door hands. 
  • Make sure the client understands these symbols and agrees.
  • Draw the sideways “v" and leave a record for the window supplier.
• Colors?
• Special considerations?
  • Traveling clearance to balcony rail
  • Remediation of encroachment on another space, as in an casement opened to a deck
  • High wind-resistant
  • Tempered in future play area, future child’s room, etc.
  • Etc.
• Muntins?
  • Style
  • Type
  • True
  • Simulated true
  • Internal grid
  • Exterior grid
  • Interior grid

HOME DESIGNER PERSPECTIVE

• Windows are a big deal 
  • In house design
    • Emergency egress
    • Lines of sight
    • Daylighting (a/k/a natural illumination)
    • Styling
  • In owner investment
    • Can be the single most expensive individual element in closing in a House construction to weather

Comment: Oddly and unfortunately, window investment can be a most likely target for getting cheap [read euphemistically: economizing]

• For an occupant
  • Safety
  • Convenience
  • Durability
  • Enjoyment of both indoor natural (read: changing in illumination, direction) lighting and views of the exterior
• Scheduling windows in a designer home plan 
  • Takes time and careful thought to address all the points that the other Guys' might not be up to doing and should be and won’t be
  • Should be engaged late in a draw 
    • Window schedule elements can be still changing this way and that well into a project
    • Keeping track and revising window schedules can be costly both in time and temper  

Comment:

• In working with stock plans, windows and window schedules can be troublesome:
  • Scheduled window not in an elevation
  • Window not scheduled and in an elevation and vice versa
  • Window in an elevation and not in a floor plan and vice versa
  • Scheduled window out-sized in an elevation
  • Scheduled window identified as to type – say, double-hung – and identified as casement in an elevation or floor plan
  • Window identified as to a specific manufacturer which manufacturer either ceased production of that model years ago or never made ‘em at all [no foolin']
  • Hopper window confused with an awning window, casement travel reversed 
  • Casement swings identified backwards

All true stories.

•  A window schedule should be coordinated with and act as a cross-check to –
  • Elevations
  • Floor plans
  • Illumination, or Daylighting, Schedule
  • Emergency Egress Schedule

ACTUAL WINDOW SCHEDULE

• Take a look-see for yourself at a recently completed house plan Window Schedule for a single level.
• This pic is chopped from a plan set that was heavily cross-referenced.
  • Witness the left-hand column “Code" tying those codes to each window so identified in the floor plans and elevations
  • Witness “Space" referencing individual areas of the house as identified separately 
  • Also, note the inclusion of skylights in the last three line entries – There in order to daylight sleeping areas to code or above code which In this and other story-and-a-half structures can become a significant challenge, especially with sizeable sleeping areas on L2, shallow-sloped roofs, and short runs 

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