Product Types, Components, and Materials
This domain checks that you can identify a product type from its operating hardware, name its components correctly, and predict how material choice affects structural, thermal, water and air performance. Exam items often describe a mechanism or a material property and ask for the product family, or describe a project condition and ask which product family can meet it.
Operating types and their logic
- Casement: hinged on a vertical edge, outswing, crank or push-out; weathertight because compression seals tighten as it closes.
- Awning: hinged at the head, outswing; hopper: hinged at the sill, inswing; projected: hardware that opens the sash outward from the frame.
- Double-hung and single-hung: vertical sliding sashes with balances; horizontal slider: sashes that slide past each other, usually with an interlock.
- Tilt-turn, pivot, fixed/picture, and parallel-opening products round out the range.
- Doors include hinged entrance doors, sliding patio doors, terrace and folding doors; skylights are fixed or venting, curb-mounted or deck-mounted.
- Commercial families: storefront (floor-to-head infill between slabs), curtain wall (spans past floor lines, moves with the structure), window wall.
Components and materials
Frames carry head, jamb and sill members; sashes hold glazing beads and weatherstrip; hardware includes locks, multi-point hardware, friction stays, balances, rollers and hinges. Aluminum is strong but conductive, so it needs a polyamide or polyurethane thermal break. Vinyl (PVC) is low-conductivity and welded at corners but expands more and needs reinforcement inserts. Wood is thermally good but needs cladding. Pultruded fiberglass is strong and dimensionally stable. Finishes follow AAMA 2603, 2604 or 2605 for liquid and powder coatings on aluminum, or AAMA 611 for anodizing.
Worked example
A hotel needs 120 fixed units, 5 ft wide by 9 ft tall, on the twelfth floor, with a calculated 55 psf. Reasoning: height points to a commercial-class product (CW or AW), the grade must be at least PG55, and 5 ft by 9 ft is larger than many standard tested sizes, so the specification must call for a unit tested at that size or an engineering evaluation of the certified line. Aluminum with a thermal break and a 2605 finish suits the exposure; glass is sized per ASTM E1300. A residential-grade vinyl unit fails on class, not on material.
Traps that cost marks
- Assuming material equals performance class: vinyl and fiberglass products can and do reach AW.
- Mixing up awning (hinged at head) and hopper (hinged at sill).
- Ignoring that hardware, weatherstrip and sash locks drive air leakage results.
- Specifying a finish system without the corresponding salt-spray and South Florida exposure level.