Window Measuring and Ordering

The Sheet Is the Product

A replacement window is manufactured to your numbers. Nothing about it exists before the measure, and after the measure nothing about it can be improved by a better installer. So this is the part of the job we take the most time over.

For each opening we record three widths, at the top, the middle and the bottom. Three heights, at the left, the centre and the right. Both diagonals, which tell us whether the opening is square. Sill slope, because a sill that has settled flat or backward will pond water against a new frame. And the depth of the existing frame, which decides whether a retrofit unit will physically fit.

We size to the smallest width and the smallest height we found. A window a little under can be shimmed and foamed. A window a little over is scrap, and scrap is a six week delay.

What Riverside Openings Do

Houses here are not uniform, even when they look it. The older places in the Wood Streets and along Victoria Avenue have frames that have moved with a century of slab and soil, and it is normal to find a quarter inch of difference between the top and bottom of one opening.

Newer tract housing off Alessandro or out in La Sierra is closer to true, but stucco makes its own trouble. The stucco return often hides the real frame edge, and it hides rot too. We probe the sill and the lower jambs with an awl on every south and west facing opening, because heavy afternoon sun and irrigation spray do most of their damage where you cannot see it.

If we find soft wood, the honest answer changes from retrofit to full frame, and that is a conversation we would rather have with a tape in hand than after your windows are built.

Things That Have to Be Decided Now

Some choices cannot be added to a window later at any price, because they are properties of the glass or the frame rather than accessories:

• Tempered glass. Required near a door, near a tub or shower, close to the floor, and at a stair landing. It is a different pane, ordered as such.
• Egress size. A bedroom window has to meet a minimum clear opening. Fitting a smaller unit into a bedroom is a code problem you inherit at resale.
• Which sash operates. On a slider, left or right. On a single hung, which half. Nobody thinks about it until the furniture is in the way.
• Grid pattern and colour. Grids on newer units sit between the panes, sealed in. They are not a sticker.
• Glass package. Low-E coating and gas fill are chosen at order time, and the numbers land on the NFRC sticker as U-factor and SHGC. Both matter here, where the west sun does more work than the winter cold.

The Read Back

When the sheet becomes an order, we read it back to you line by line before it is released. Size, material, colour inside and out, glass package, grids, screens, tempering, operation. It takes ten minutes and it is the last cheap moment in the whole project.

After that read back you have a short window, usually a few days, in which changes are still free. We give you that date in writing rather than leaving you to guess.

The measure itself is free. A single opening takes about twenty minutes, a whole house takes a morning, and you are under no obligation at the end of it.

Call (951) 512-8411.