Be There for the Inspection, and Leave the Trim Off

Most window schedules are built backward from the day the units arrive. Here the inspection procedure does more to set the calendar than the delivery date does, and it is unusually specific about how. The city's Window and Door Inspection Procedure, rev. 05/03/2024, states: 'Homeowner/Representative and Contractor/Installer shall be present for inspection.'

One line, with real consequences for anybody who spends part of the year elsewhere or assumed the contractor would handle the visit alone. You are there, or a representative is. Structural attachment and final inspections are called separately, so that is two appointments rather than one.

The attachment inspection also has to happen with the work deliberately unfinished: 'During attachment inspection all openings shall be installed. No covers, trim, casings, interior caulking/finish allowed during inspection (shims and shim spacing to be verified). Exterior caulking allowed as to keep opening watertight.' Every opening in, nothing hidden, the shims visible.

Median year of construction is 1992, the newest of the six cities on this site. A larger share of the housing here sits close to current practice rather than decades behind it, which means the honest first question is not which product but whether the existing units are actually failing.

Where they are not, replacing the whole envelope in one order is a bigger decision than it is usually sold as, and the sensible sequence is often the elevations that take the weather first. Where they are, the work tends to be straightforward by Broward standards, because openings are more likely to be standard sizes and the bucks behind them more likely to be sound.

1. 01Sequence the whole house so every opening is installed before the attachment inspection is called.
2. 02Book that inspection against your calendar as well as ours, because you or your representative has to attend.
3. 03Hold trim, casing and interior finish until the attachment inspection has passed.
4. 04Print and label photographs by opening number to match the retrofit schedule wherever the inspector allows them.

The photograph rule sounds trivial and is not. The images have to tie to the opening numbers on the county retrofit schedule, which means the schedule has to be right at the start rather than tidied up at the end. We number openings at the measure and carry those same numbers through ordering, installation, the schedule and the printed photographs, because the inspection is exactly where an inconsistency between those four surfaces.

Source: City of Pembroke Pines Window and Door Inspection Procedure, rev. 05/03/2024 — checked 2026-09-24