My new fiberglass windows from Milgard had been ready for me to pick up since May 23rd, but I was not ready for them until after this past weekend of Prosoco R-Guard application. On Wednesday, I excitedly drove to the Milgard manufacturing plant in Tualatin to pick them up. Luckily all five fit in my Subaru!
I was impressed by the amount of packaging they had, although I had called the day before to ensure they would be ready and inquired about packaging needs so maybe they added more for me. I did check them over while we installed them to ensure that they were in good condition and they all were so I should be good to go. Milgard has a lifetime warranty on their windows which will be great if I have any problems with them.
My friend, Nicole, who I met though the AmeriCorps program working for Habitat for Humanity, took time out of her evening to venture out to site to help me get them all installed so I wouldn't have to worry about them being stored on site. I was very grateful to have her experienced help and agility on ladders to carefully hand up the windows, shim them and temporarily screw them into place. All five windows took about 2 1/2 hours to install and then it was burrito time!
My friend Anne, came out on Friday to install the backer rod around the windows on the inside. We realized that although the gap around the window was only 1/8", we needed more than 3/8" backer rod to fill the gap since it was deeper behind. I ran to the local ACE store for some 1/2" and 5/8" backer rod while Anne used up the 3/8" I had bought from Parr Lumber.
When I returned, we continued to install several layers of backer rod so that we would use less of the caulk. Finally, we caulked around all of the window edges with the Prosoco AirDam product. This product could have also been used behind the window flanges as they were installed but Tom said that was overkill and it would have been messy so I chose not to. I did install more Fast Flash over the top and side flanges after removing the screws although it was also not necessary. I think it's a good method to have some redundancy in building though. More photos can be found on my flickr!