LAYOUT YOUR HOME AND NUMBER THE OPENINGS:
Measure your openings in a clockwise manner. Start with the front door and work your way around the house. Count every opening whether it gets protection or not. This will help avoid confusion when you receive your products.
When installing a product vertically, the width is from left to right and the height is up and down. Conversely, when mounting a product horizontal, the width is now up and down and the length is left to right. Let’s say an opening buck size is, width 38 inches, and the height is 54 inches. If you are mounting your panel product vertically the BUCK sizes would be the 38 wide by 54 high. From there you add the needed “overages” of 6 inches in width and 6 inches in length which would give you a FINISHED size of 44 wide by 60 high. The FINISHED size is what you base your purchase on.
When mounting a panel product horizontally you rotate the sizing to get your sizes. Using the example, you take your BUCK opening size of 38 wide by 54 high and switch those numbers to get 54 wide by 38 high. Our FINISHED width is now 60 inches and the FINISHED height is 44 inches. You may think that those numbers are the same!! Well, yes and no. Here’s the difference. When you buy panels you choose the number of panels needed for an opening by the FINISHED WIDTH. If you were to not switch the BUCK opening numbers in our example you would order only enough panels to cover a 44 inch width instead of the needed 60 inches.
If you have a window sill you have to go around when installing your panels vetically, your HEIGHT measurement would run from the BOTTOM of the sill to the top of the opening. When doing this type of installation you only need to add 4 inches to your height to get your FINISHED size instead of the 6 inches noted before because the attachment point of the bottom or F Track will sit at the bottom of the sill which is usually more than 2 inches below the opening.
NOTE: Your width measurement would be the BUCK width PLUS 6 inches of overlap PLUS an additional 2 inches for each inch of sill projection. Using our example opening, if you have a sill that projects 1 inch out from the vertical face of the building, you'd take the 38 inch buck width and add your 6 inches of standard overage, then add 2 more inches to get a FINISHED width of 46 inches. This is done because the further out from the face of the building the easier it might be for wind and debris to get into your opening. Adding that extra 2 inches for every inch of projection helps defeat that problem. The other option is adding pieces of angle to the sides of your openings to "block" any potential intrusion.
If you have decrorative "banding" around your openings you have the choice of mounting your track into the banding or you can go below and above the banding.
If you choose to go above and below the banding there are a few things to remember. For example, if our opening above had 4" wide banding around the window with no window sill, our buck height of 54" now became 62" because we have to measure from the top of the band over the opening to the bottom of the band below the opening. Then, we have to add 4 inches to that to get our FINISHED opening size. You can attach track directly through banding but it must be of a solid making (no foam) and you must use longer tapcons to attach the track. The exception to this rule is if the banding is made of wood and the banding is secure to the structure of the home. If you have to get longer tapcons, they need to be at least 2 1/4" PLUS the depth of the banding. We offer 2 1/4" and 3 1/4" tapcons but longer ones are available by special order if necessary. Just call or email for pricing and delivery times.
NOTE: You have to measure the sill when you are mounting a panel system product vertically. If you are planning on direct mounting a panel system product horizontally you would measure from the top of the sill to the top of the opening to get your width because your first panel will sit directly on the sill and your mounting points will go up the sides of the opening. DON’T FORGET TO ADD IN YOUR “OVERAGES”!!! |
