Commercial Window Replacement in Richmond, VA

In an older low-rise brick office, each window is usually a punched opening in the masonry: a double-hung or a fixed lite with a stone or brick sill. Replacement there looks a lot like residential work, done at a larger scale and in heavier commercial-grade frames. The choices are insert versus full tear-out, aluminum versus vinyl or clad wood, and which openings need to open at all. Fixed units meet a tighter code number than operable ones (see the energy code section below), so keeping one operable unit per office and fixing the rest is one way to work with the limits. Ask for a sample window installed first, so the sightlines, color and sill detail can be approved before the full order.

More than half of Richmond's occupied homes are rented, about 58,900 units in the Census Bureau's latest five-year count, so a lot of window work happens in apartments and rental houses. Virginia's permit exemption for like-for-like swaps covers an R-2 apartment building only where the work serves a single dwelling unit; a building-wide replacement program is a different conversation with the city. Replacing whole units on upper floors of apartments can also trigger Virginia's window opening control device rule, explained on our double-hung windows page, and buildings from before 1978 fall under the federal lead-safe rule covered on our wood window restoration page. Ask the installer to price per window and per unit, so turnovers can be scheduled one apartment at a time.

Virginia's Existing Building Code sends every installation or replacement of glass to Chapter 24 of the Virginia Construction Code, its glass and glazing chapter, so a broken lite isn't always replaced with what was there. The general rule on which locations need safety glass (doors, glass next to doors, large low panes) is on our sliding glass doors page. Laminated glass has a plastic interlayer that holds the broken pieces in the frame, which is why owners choose it for ground-floor windows exposed to break-ins and for rooms facing loud streets. Ask which lites are being replaced with which glass, and why.

Churches, older schools and civic buildings have the openings standard catalogs don't cover: round-top and Gothic arches, multi-pane steel sash, and stained glass. Here repair and replacement are often both on the table. Steel sash can be scraped, primed and reglazed, and stained glass can be protected with a separate exterior glazing layer rather than replaced. Arched replacement units are built to templates taken at the building, so lead times run longer. If the building sits in one of Richmond's Old and Historic Districts, the city's review rules on our wood window restoration page apply before anything is ordered.

Main-street buildings have two very different window jobs stacked on top of each other. At street level there's the storefront and, above it, a transom band that has sometimes been covered with paneling or boarded over. Upstairs are tall double-hungs serving offices or apartments. Broad Street and Shockoe Slip are both City Old and Historic Districts, so many of these facades need review before work starts. Ask whether the installer handles both the storefront glass and the upper sash, or only the upper windows, and how the sidewalk below will be protected during the work.