Window and Door Surrounds Specifications

When installing our window and door surround your bricklayer will need to place two layers of 1/2" Styrofoam against the window frame and then lay the brick to the 1" piece, once the brick has cured they remove the foam and you are left with a 1" space around the entire window, when our window surround is installed this will leave a 3/16" caulk joint that the builder will need to caulk. Note: If your window company requires more than a 3/16" caulk joint around the window you may need to adjust this 1" space accordingly.

We use finish screws to pin the 45 degree miters together along with two finish screws to attach the keystone, these are the only two locations that requires screws. This leaves you with a window and door surround that has a very clean appearance. We use colored match caulking at each 45 degree miter and where the window surround sets on the sill in these two locations we leave a 1/8" space for caulking. We use clear caulking on the tops of the window surrounds only; no other caulking is done by the sub contractors.

Our patent pending window surrounds has two unique features, the first being the lip seal, which is hollow in design which allows only the outside 1/2" of surround to rest on the face brick, the reason for this is that bricks are uneven and sometimes the wall will have a bow over a 1/4" in the wall, with this design it allows the installer to put a scribe line on the back of the surround and sand our surround with a belt sander to better fit the surround to the brick. The second feature is the built in water gutter on our window and door surrounds, this allows water that may get behind the surround to be channeled away from the window to the vertical legs and out the bottom of the sill, for this reason never caulk the bottom of our window surround, this is the escape path for the water.

Our door and window surrounds weighs 9 pounds per foot this means that a standard 6' window surround leg will weigh 54 pounds; one man can lift and install our surround with out any additional help saving the homeowner around $20.00 to $30.00 per foot below what it would cost to install a limestone window surround.

There are no mortar joints required on our surrounds, our product is sent to the jobsite in 18' lengths and custom fit on site, because the product is lightweight it allows our sub contractors to install each section of the window surround in one piece eliminating the need for mortar joints on the window surround, this leaves a beautiful finished surround.

We use adhesive to attach our surrounds to the brick, when installing the top piece of the window surround, you must put a solid line of adhesive from the steel lentil to our surround, this along with the water gutter is double protection against water getting back to your window causing mold and water damage to the window. When installing the window surround legs we apply adhesive in 3 locations from the brick to the surround. The window sill we also apply adhesive in 3 locations under the bearing points of the window, this allows for lumber shrinkage, to insure that the sill does not crack. Our adhesive sets in 5 to 6 minutes, once the adhesive sets the bond is permanent, we have tried to remove a window surround after it had cured, it cracked the end of the brick before it broke the bond to the surround.