House Plan Window Schedules – the Good, Bad, and Ugly.

A house plan is not complete without a window schedule, a table of information about the greater and lesser details of window selection and installation. Before The Architect, nationwide house designers, sees the good, bad, and ugly in window schedules, and shows you how to get it right the first time.

The good of a window schedule comes with the need for specifics about windows to be installed in a new house or a house remodel. Windows are always amazingly important and often amazingly expensive elements in a house design. Windows are an integral part of a house plan. They are identified throughout a house plan in sleeping area emergency egress, design style consistency, adequacy of natural light illumination to interior spaces, visual elevations, floor plans, wall framing plans, electrical plans, and, possibly, even roof plans. Get sloppy with a window schedule and you’re sure to regret it as an owner.

The bad of a window schedule comes in not being specific about your windows. There are many ways to identify a window to owners, framers, manufacturers and suppliers, finishers, lighting professionals, and others: maker, model, type, materials, number of units, color, mulled units, rough or masonry opening, height over floor level, house level for installation, width, height, location, features, e.g., muntins, and special features, e.g., tints. Leave out some of these identifiers and who knows what you will get installed.

For example, it used to be that plan set elevations specified header heights, generally intended to make sure that window tops and door tops were more or less on the same horizontal plane. But window designs aren’t necessarily so simple anymore. House designs, particularly in Craftsman Style or any of the Country Styles, can involve window sizes and sites varying widely even on the same façade. Before The Architect specifies individual window sill plate height at top of face over rough floor as the window height metric; there’s no mistaking where the window frame will sit and there’s no guessing about the finish floor build up.

The ugly of a window schedule comes either with its not being done at all or its being done poorly. Before The Architect reviews and repairs house plans, and bears witness to botched window schedules done by others. Recently, a stock plan set done by others and sent to Before The Architect for review specified a well-known window maker that no longer made those window models….not for years. At this moment, Before The Architect is working with a stock plan set done by others the window schedule of which refers to windows apparently none of which was ever made by the clearly referenced manufacturer. Then there are house plan sets identifying windows that could not possibly fit in the spaces designed for them, indications of double-hung for single-hung or some other type or no type, unsafe siting too near exhaust vents or casements opening into walkways, kitchen windows set behind and below countertops, and much, much more.

A window schedule can be difficult to develop with its wealth of worthwhile, useful facts and figures. A house plan’s window schedule well done delivers a wonderful payoff – client satisfaction in getting a vital house design element done right without all the kinds of problems that show up down the road of bad design poorly done.