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Woodycrest Avenue at West 164th Street, Bronx — A Whole Building in Aluplast uPVC Windows, Installed in Two Weeks
Scope of Work
The Elston is a new apartment building on the corner of Woodycrest Avenue and West 164th Street in Highbridge, a few blocks up the hill from Yankee Stadium, with twenty-five homes behind a facade of pale and grey panels with black window bands. Alex GC supplied and installed every window in the building — the paired units in the panel facade, the single units in the black bands, the balcony doors — on Aluplast uPVC profiles in a black exterior finish, and completed the installation in two weeks.
uPVC, and Why It Was Right Here
Most of the buildings on this site are glazed in aluminum, and there are good reasons for that on facades with large openings and long spans. A rental building with standard-sized punched windows is a different case, and here uPVC was the right answer. A modern European uPVC profile like Aluplast is a multi-chamber extrusion with a steel reinforcement in the frame, which gives it thermal performance that aluminum has to work hard to match, at a cost that leaves room in a rental budget for other things. It does not need painting, it does not corrode, and it takes the same European hardware as an aluminum window, so the apartments get windows that seal with compression gaskets rather than sliding weatherstrip.
The honest limit of uPVC is size and colour: the frame is heavier-looking than aluminum at the same opening, very large units need more reinforcement, and dark colours on the sun side want a laminate foil or a co-extruded cap rather than paint. On this building the openings are moderate and the black exterior sits in black-painted bands, so none of those limits bit.
Two Weeks
The building has six floors of windows and a tight site on a corner with a school crossing. An installation like this only goes fast if it is planned floor by floor, with the windows arriving in the order they go in, so nothing sits on site waiting and every crew day puts units in the wall. Two weeks from the first unit to the last is the kind of schedule a general contractor can plan the rest of the job around — the interiors, the facade panels, the inspection — and it is the number we quote against on buildings of this size. The photographs show the installation complete with the protective labels still on and the sidewalk shed still up.
Windows in a Panel Facade
The facade is composite panel over a framed wall rather than masonry, which changes how the window is fixed and flashed: the frame anchors to the structure behind the panel, the air and water barrier is tied to the window flange, and the panel returns to the frame with a sealed joint. Getting that sequence right with the panel installer is most of the coordination on a building like this, and it is why the windows went in on a schedule the panels could follow.
Photographs
Photographs from the end of the installation, spring 2023, with labels still on the glass and the sidewalk shed in place.
Similar Work and Related Specifications
Casement windows · Tilt-and-turn windows · Low-e glass · Installation services · Material supply · 408 Lefferts Avenue, Brooklyn · 2518 Ocean Avenue, Brooklyn
Planning Something Similar?
For a rental building with standard openings, ask us to price uPVC alongside aluminum. We will tell you honestly which one the facade needs, and how fast the installation can go.