A Historical Brick Mixed Use Apartment Building in N.W. Portland, built in 1911.

Back when fire rated doors and windows were steel encased wood sash.

And the fire-code allowed the use of “wire-glass.” Why fire-rated windows?

Adjoining building structure in close proximity. The operative notion being “extending containment via longer burn times.”

The problem we’ve been called to resolve? Loose & Missing Jamb Components have translated into extremely loose windows…

…and a non-functioning counter-weight system by which the window-sash fail to stay up when you open them.

And so our technicians Steve Hilt & Phil McNair employ their myriad problem-solving skills to replace what needs…

…to be replaced and rebuilding what needs to be rebuilt. Newly revamped jamb-legs…

…encased in a metal cladding. Sash cords reattached to the counterweights…

…and the window assembly is ready for another 102 years or so.

The North Park Lofts in the Pearl on N.W. 8th Avenue.

An upscale lifestyle highlighted all the more by contrasting the modern against the aesthetic of what used to be known as Portland’s old town.

Speaking of modern…how about some fancy German engineering in the form of some Tilt-Turn hardware on some rather large Vinyl Casement Windows?

Well…maybe not so fancy when it’s broken. It probably doesn’t show up in the photos, but as someone who repairs windows and doors, I have to ask what someone…

…was thinking when the spec’d out such large casement windows. But it’s Vinyl right? And vinyl is relatively light…so what is the concern?

Look again at the percentage of the window that consists of glass. That’s double-pane glass. German engineering or not…that’s a lot of weight on this ultra-complicated, highly (maybe overly)…

…engineered “Wink Haus” multi-point locking…multi-option hinging hardware. Do we really need multiple opening options when it comes to our exterior windows?

It’s kind of cool the first time you come across it, not unlike many novelties. But marrying this ultra-complicated hardware with a non-structural material such as Vinyl is a little like having a convertible car in the…

…Willamette Valley…not very practical because its structural integrity is going to be sorely and frequently tested. Once again, it may sound as though we tend to bite the hand that feeds us as we critique some of these…

…questionable marketing trends in the fenestration industry, but we do feel compelled to exercise a degree of candor with our clients about the maintenance side of these products.

The Original Bavarian Sausage Delicatessen in Tigard.

The insulated glass in the display cases has failed, which means that the air-tight seals around the perimeter has…

…suffered some sort of breach. A hole, a tear or possibly even just the disintegration of the butyl-membrane.

The glass units are 12′ wide, which as you can see in this photo, required Jared to use the passenger door to get in and out of his van. Add to that, the fact that the original glass was triple-glazed,…

…which means they use three panes of glass to create the insulated units, and you may be able to understand some of the logistical challenges we faced on this project, handling the glass.

I am not a fan of triple-glazed glass. For the most part, I view it as a gimmick, like the Argon-gas option. Something to give the buying public a…

…sense of value in trade for the enormous amount of money that certain window manufactures want to charge.
But besides the fact that it increases the odds of seal…

…failure by a factor of two, there are all kinds of problems related to the added weight that is brought to bear upon operable windows & their related components.

Obviously, as door & window mechanics, this is something we would tend to think about. Thus it is that the replacement glass we installed here was not triple-glazed.

Southwest 9th & Burnside St.

The North Pacific Building.

If you enlarge the previous photo, you might be able to see the STRAPS being used to keep the glass from falling out of the window sash.

As one might imagine, these awning windows might tend to actually catch & collect water at the top of the bottom-rail when it rains. No doubt, sorely testing the original putty-glazing.

Old growth, tight-grain Fir Wood-Species, and the protection afforded by Lead-Paint aside, it’s probably not too difficult to imagine why these windows would be showing their age about now.

So it was that we were contracted to temporarily board-up the opening…

…after which we brought the sash back to our shop & fabricated and installed a new bottom-rail.

After which we the repaired window sash was returned to the job-site…

…one early morning for reinstallation.

Another 100 years of use? Who knows?

The 5 story Hamilton Arms Condominiums on S.W. 16th Ave., built in 1928, was converted in 2005 to condominiums, at which time it might be assumed the windows were changed to Vinyl Sliding windows.

Installing windows into a masonry building such as this eschews tying them into a moisture-barrier, so you need to know what you’re doing in sealing them against the elements.

Finding potential points of entry for how the water was ending up at the top of the window in the condo below, was not of course, a very difficult task, as you can see by this photo.

Phil McNair digs out some of the old caulking that was beginning to peel away…

…to reveal what was behind the caulking. Mostly, just a void leading into the wall below.

The truly proper way to fix this water leak would have been to remove the window & re-install it. But that would have necessitated a man-lift, thus considerably more money, and no doubt all the windows should be redone. At least on this end of the building.

But the property management company that hired us, like most all property management companies, have financial constraints that tend to dictate “patching things up” rather than embarking on an expensive redo.

So measures were taken that should protect this one opening for the foreseeable near future.

Not only does the aluminum drip-cap cover the seam that ran the entire width of the window, as can be seen in the 2nd photo (above), but it should also help deflect moisture from accessing through the top of anymore caulking that begins to peel away at the bottom. Unconventional, but functional.

You may note that care was taken to avoid plugging (covering) the weep-hole system designed into the sills of these Vinyl Windows.

Cathedral School in Northwest Portland. Existing commercial-grade aluminum window assembly currently sports an awning-function window.

For reasons left unexplained, we were asked whether or not they could somehow acquire an in-swinging window that hinges at the bottom…what is known as a “hopper-window.” After considering replacement options, we suggested a modification option.

This was due to the costs that would be associated with replacing the arched-top window assembly that currently matches others along the same exterior wall. After securing the opening, the aluminum-sash is taken back to our shop whereupon David Castro cuts the aluminum frame components in preparation for creating a smaller sash.

This is necessary to facilitate the smaller opening on the interior side of the frame, AKA a jamb. The window-sash is stepped, as is the jamb-assembly into which it operates. So originally, the interior side of the jamb was smaller than the exterior. When we are finished, this will be reversed.

After we receive the new, smaller insulated glass unit that we installed and glazed into the modified sash, the sash is taken back out to the job-site, whereupon further modifications are made by Sean Miller to fine-tune its fit.

The aluminum jamb assembly is also fine-tuned with a belt-sander on the interior portion. Plus, new flat-bar aluminum is added on the exterior to further accommodate the “stepped-nature” of both the sash and the jamb.

Weep-holes are created into this new aluminum material that correlates with the original weep-hole system.

Pull-handles are added, because the original latch-handle is taken off of the sash and installed onto the jamb.

This is due to the different sash function. This photo, and the previous one show most clearly, the STEPPED nature of the sash we’ve spoken of.

We also added a screen to keep out the unwanted insects.

Once upon a time, this was a public school in S.E. Portland, or so the story goes. But for years now, it has been being used to house & restrain troubled female youths who haven’t yet graduated to full-scale adult-type incarceration.

It would probably come as a surprise to nobody to hear that these females tend to resent these imposed restraints upon their youthful proclivities.

Nor would many people be shocked to hear that some of these girls engage in acting out their frustration and opposition to the authorities who have brought such encumbrances to bear upon their personhood.

And so it is that we have been called upon for a number of years now to replace the broken glass that serve as the exclamation-marks to the girl’s protests.

But now, as you can see, we are no longer merely dealing with broken glass, but also broken window sash as well.

Unfortunately, the original Vinyl Windows are no longer made. So replacing just the one or two broken sash is not an option. And no, generally speaking…there is no screwing or gluing the various vinyl components back together. If they were wood, then that would be a different story.

Here are a couple more broken sash which the grounds manager had collected after boarding up the openings.

And as it would happen, these broken single-hung windows were factory-mulled together with other single-hung windows. So one broken sash translated into a mulled assembly like this needing to be replaced. That’s three single-hung windows mulled together to become one window assembly.

And so it was that this particular project involved replacing a quantity of two complete mulled assemblies such as this new one shown above.

Here’s a photo from the interior after the bottom sash have been installed. Expensive temper tantrums.

Rivers Edge Hotel on Hamilton Court in Southwest Portland.

Formerly called the Avalon, it’s located (not surprisingly) down on the Willamette river.

A glass awning hanging over the main entry doors. A glass awning with a possible design flaw. As the first several photos indicate, this awning is sloped back towards the building structure.

Of course the ends of the glass are hanging over a gutter. However, the overlapping mull-covers…

…do not extend to the full length of the glass panes, leaving a gap between the panes. And of course, the gap represent a means by which rain-water drains off the awning structure BEFORE reaching the gutter.

This is what it looked like from below. And apparently, there were hotel guests commenting upon the…

…cold water unexpectedly bombarding them when they thought they were under cover.

And so it was that we were employed to devise some means to span these gaps.

This shot shows the aluminum sheet-metal piece we inserted beneath the mull-covers, and out over the gaps in the glass.

And finally a shot after we applied a sealant and removed the masking tape. We used a black sealant to match the black-boot beneath the mull-post covers.

Multi-Use Condos @ N.W. 24th & Thurman with Pella Wood-Clad Windows on the upper levels, both front…

…and back.

The ground-floor windows are actually storefront aluminum as one might expect for use on space used for businesses.

But the living-space side of the equation employed the use of Pella wood-clad windows.

For the uninitiated, wood-clad means wood-sash and jambs on the interior side, as shown above.

And extruded-aluminum cladding that covers the wood on the exterior side. The point being to achieve a low-maintenance product. The real rarity on this project was having clients who are savvy enough to grasp how limited that “low-maintenance” claim can be.

We were employed by these property owners to “cap-glaze” the seam there between where the glass is glazed to the bottom-rail of the sash. Few are they who pay to have this done before they are dealing with some form of water damage.

In this particular case, the condo owners joined together to have us service almost all the condos on this relatively small complex in an effort to save some money by means of a quantity discount…which can be achieved to some extent, depending upon the scope of the project.

Generally speaking, “cap-glazing” is not considered a long-term glazing method. But if you have someone check your windows every couple years or so to stay up on it when the wet-glaze caulking products begin to pull away from the seams…

…it can be considered a viable maintenance practice that could mean the difference between whether or not you have to replace thousands of dollars’ worth of the most expensive windows money can buy. Obviously, some of these property owners did their homework.

Wieden & Kennedy on N.W. 13th Ave.

We were contacted over the issue of ventilation. As in the need for more of it.

Some of the offices were outfitted with operable sash windows,…awing function windows to be exact, and some were not.

The mission should we decide to accept it was to remove a quantity of (6) picture sash, plow the existing sash, install friction-hinges,…

…weatherstripping & latches like some of the other casement sash had.

It was obviously a mission we accepted. We were able to remove the sash and machine them right there on site…

…and then re-install them all on the same day. Jared manning the vertical lift…

…and Nate coordinating things from the interior side, passing things back and forth as needed.

We also came back in 2010 and did six more of them on the opposite side of the building.