Fixed Window

The Case for a Window That Does Not Open

A fixed window has no sash, no hinges, no operator and no lock. Everything that wears out on a window is absent, and everything that leaks air is absent with it.

That gives three real advantages. It is the most airtight window available, because the glass is sealed directly into the frame with no opening joint to seal. It gives the most glass for a given opening, since there is no sash frame inside the outer frame taking up sightline. And nothing fails — no balance to replace, no hinge to sag, no operator to strip.

It is also the cheapest window per square foot, which surprises people who assume a large picture window is expensive. The glass is the cost; the mechanism is what you are not paying for.

What You Give Up

Ventilation, escape and cleaning.

Ventilation is a code matter, not a preference. New York calculates habitable-room ventilation on the area that actually opens, so a room glazed entirely with fixed lites may not comply regardless of how much glass it has. This is the single most common problem with fixed glazing and it is entirely avoidable at design stage.

Escape. A fixed window cannot serve as a required means of egress. In a bedroom that matters.

Cleaning. The outer face has to be reached from outside. At ground level that is trivial; on a fourth floor it means equipment.

The Usual Answer: Combination Units

Most well-designed glazing pairs a large fixed lite with a smaller operable one. A picture window with casements either side; a fixed centre with an awning vent below; a fixed panel with a tilt-and-turn beside it.

You get the glass area and the sightlines from the fixed portion and the ventilation, escape and cleaning access from the operable one — and you only pay for mechanism where it is needed.

Size Limits

Fixed glazing can be very large, but the limit is weight and handling rather than the frame. Thickness rises with area, weight rises with thickness, and at some point the unit cannot be carried up a stair, through a building, or lifted into place without equipment. On a replacement job in an existing building, access is frequently the binding constraint rather than anything structural.

Large fixed lites at height should also be laminated, so that a failure does not put glass down onto whatever is below.

Where Fixed Glazing Works

These describe the kind of work each area brings rather than any specific client project.

View elevations — Deal, Long Branch, Todt Hill, Riverdale, the waterfront. Where the view is the point, fixed glazing gives the largest uninterrupted glass and the slenderest sightlines. Paired with operable units elsewhere in the room for ventilation.

Stairwells, landings and double-height space — townhouses citywide. Openings nobody can reach to operate, where a fixed lite with a high-level awning or electric operator is the sensible arrangement.

Commercial and storefront — Flatbush, Third Avenue, Astoria. Retail frontage is largely fixed glazing by nature, with ventilation handled mechanically.

Transoms and sidelites — brownstone entrances, apartment lobbies. Fixed lites above and beside doors. Safety glazing is required in panels adjacent to a door, so these are tempered or laminated by code.

Tell us the opening size, what the room is used for, and how the glass would get to the opening. We supply and install across Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx and Staten Island, and throughout Northern New Jersey, the Jersey Shore, Philadelphia and the Lehigh Valley.