Customer Walkthrough and Warranty Handover

Purpose

Every window job leaves behind two separate warranties and one bucket neither of them covers, and the walkthrough is the only moment the shop gets to put those three in the customer's head while standing in front of the actual units. The manufacturer warrants the product. The shop warrants its installation. Nobody warrants interior condensation, a screen the dog goes through, or glass broken after the crew leaves.

Skip that separation and the shop pays in truck rolls. The most common one in this trade is the winter condensation call: water beading on the room side of a new unit, a customer certain the seals failed, and a tech driving out to wipe a window with a rag. It is free to prevent at handover and costs a half day every time it is not.

The second thing this guarantees is that the escape-opening hardware gets demonstrated to the people who would have to use it at night, in smoke, having never touched it before.

Scope

Covers the closeout visit: the unit-by-unit demonstration, the fall-prevention and escape release demonstration, the warranty separation conversation, product registration, the punch list, and the signed completion record. Runs after every unit has passed commissioning.

Does not cover technical verification of the installation itself, which the final operation and lock verification SOP owns and which must be complete before this visit is scheduled. Does not cover receiving damage and pre-install claims, which the delivery inspection and damage claim SOP owns.

Roles and responsibilities

The walkthrough procedure

1. Schedule the visit with the person who signed the contract and with daylight on the units. Confirm the signer will be present, or get their written designation of who stands in for them. Acceptance: the signer or a designated person is present, and the visit falls in daylight so glass can actually be looked at. Wrong looks like walking a job with a tenant or a teenager because they were the ones home. Stop rule: no signer and no written designation means the demonstration happens but the acknowledgment in step 8 is not signed that day. Whether a non-signer's signature binds anyone is a question for the shop's attorney, not something to settle at the door. Hazard: the walkthrough happens after the site is swept and magnet-swept, because customers walk their own house in socks and glass chips and fasteners land where you cannot see them on a light floor.

2. Demonstrate each unit with the customer's hands on it, not yours. Have them open, close and lock every unit, tilt the sash in and back on a tilt-style double hung, and remove and reseat a screen once. Acceptance: the customer operates and locks each unit unaided, and reseats the screen unaided. Wrong looks like the lead demonstrating smoothly while the customer watches and nods. Stop rule: a unit the customer cannot lock without force is not a training problem, it goes back to the commissioning procedure's lock and square check before this visit closes. Hazard: a tilted sash is heavy and will come out of the balance shoes if it is released at the wrong angle, so show the catch and the reseat first and never let a customer hold a tilted sash one-handed.

3. Demonstrate the fall-prevention release and the escape opening on every unit that has one. Have the customer engage the opening control device, then release it and open the unit to its full travel, then close it and confirm the device self-reset. Acceptance: the customer performs release, full opening and reset unaided, and every household member who sleeps in that room is named as needing the same demonstration. Wrong looks like the lead releasing it once and saying "it just pops." Stop rule: a device that limits the opening but does not release to the full escape opening is red-tagged on the spot and that unit is not handed over; it becomes a return visit with the coordinator, not a note. Before leaving, tell the occupants of that room in person and in writing that the escape release does not open fully, that the room's escape route is impaired until the return visit, and confirm they have a second way out; record who was told and when. Hazard: run this demonstration standing beside the opening rather than in front of it, and keep small children out of the room while the stop is released, because the sash swings free the instant it clears.

4. Separate the two warranties on the paperwork, in front of them. Put the manufacturer's warranty document and the shop's own installation warranty side by side and name what each covers, using the words in the documents rather than a summary from memory: the product warranty on glass, seals, frame and hardware, and the shop's warranty on the installation, the perimeter seal and the flashing. Acceptance: the customer can say, unprompted, which document covers a unit that fogs between the panes and which covers water coming in at the perimeter. Wrong looks like "it's all warrantied, just call us." Stop rule: if the customer cannot make that distinction, go through it again before moving on, because this is the whole point of the visit.

5. Cover the bucket neither warranty carries, and teach the condensation test. Name the exclusions plainly: interior condensation, glass broken after handover, screen damage, hardware forced past its stop, and interior finish work outside the contract. Then teach the test, because condensation is the one that generates calls. Water on the room side of the glass wipes off with a cloth and is room air meeting cold glass, not a failed seal. Fogging between the panes cannot be wiped and is a sealed-unit failure that the product warranty covers. The mechanism is dew point: from a psychrometric chart at sea level, indoor air at 70 F holds its moisture down to about 50 F at 50 percent relative humidity and only down to about 60 F at 70 percent, so the wetter the house, the warmer the glass has to be to stay dry. Acceptance: the customer states the wipe test back and knows that fogging between the panes is the call worth making. Wrong looks like promising the new windows will never show condensation. Stop rule: if the customer already has visible interior condensation at handover, measure it in step 7 rather than debating it.

6. Register the products and hand over the packet with its contents listed. Submit the registration the manufacturer's warranty document requires, within the window that document states, and record the confirmation. Acceptance: registration confirmation number recorded per unit or per order as the manufacturer requires, and a packet handed over containing the warranty documents, the operation and care instructions, the unit schedule with sizes and glass package, and the shop's service contact. Wrong looks like assuming registration is optional; some warranties condition coverage or transferability on it, and the document says which. Stop rule: a serial or label that has already been removed by the customer is recovered from the order record before leaving, not looked up later.

7. Walk the punch list with the customer and write every item with an owner and a date. Go opening to opening and let them point. Acceptance: each item recorded with location, description, owner and a specific return date; nothing recorded as "to be scheduled." Wrong looks like a verbal "we'll take care of that" on a torn screen. Stop rule: an item the shop does not consider covered is written down anyway, marked as disputed, and routed to the owner rather than argued at the door. Hazard: do not perform an unplanned repair during the walkthrough to make an item go away; a ladder or a pry bar coming back out with a customer standing beside the opening is how the last hour of a job produces its only injury.

8. Sign the completion acknowledgment with the open items printed on it, and set the follow-up. The acknowledgment lists what was demonstrated, what was handed over, and every open punch item with its date. Acceptance: signed by the contract signer, with a copy left with them the same day. What this gets the shop is a dated record that the customer was shown the units, the releases and the coverage split, and that the open items were known and agreed on the day; whether it waives or bars anything is a question for the shop's own attorney. Wrong looks like a signature on a clean form over an open punch list. Stop rule: no signature and no designation means the visit is logged as demonstrated but unsigned, and the coordinator follows up in writing rather than the lead pressing for it on the doorstep.

The record this produces

The closeout record carries: date, who was present and in what capacity, per-unit demonstration result including who operated it, the fall-prevention release result on each unit with a device, confirmation the warranty split was covered, registration confirmation numbers, the packet contents list, every punch item with location, owner, date and disputed flag, and the signed acknowledgment or the reason it is unsigned.

It attaches to the job and to the customer. Three readers use it. The coordinator works the punch list from it. Whoever answers the phone next winter reads it to see whether the condensation conversation happened before quoting a service call. On a resale two years out, the registration numbers and the transferability terms are in one place instead of a drawer.

Worked pass: eleven units, one held back

A whole-house job, eleven units, the contract signer present in mid-afternoon light.

Steps 1 and 2 run clean across all eleven. The customer locks each unit unaided, tilts and reseats two sashes, and pulls and reseats a screen.

Step 3 fails at the upstairs rear bedroom. The opening control device limits the opening correctly, but on release the stop does not fully retract and the sash reaches roughly half its travel before binding. That unit is designated as the escape opening for that bedroom, so a partial opening is the exact failure mode the device exists not to create. The stop rule runs: the unit is red-tagged, it is not handed over, and it goes to the coordinator as a return visit with a device replacement rather than as a punch note. Ten of the eleven units are handed over that day.

Step 5 runs into a live question. The customer has been seeing water on the room side of the new bathroom window each morning. A hygrometer in the hallway reads 70 F and 70 percent relative humidity, which puts the dew point at about 60 F, and an infrared thermometer set to the glass emissivity value in its own manual, aimed away from any reflected lamp, reads the center of that glass at 54 F. Glass at 54 F sitting in air whose dew point is 60 F will wet, and it does. The water wipes off, which confirms it is room air rather than a sealed-unit failure, and the conversation turns to the bath fan run time rather than to a warranty claim.

Step 7 collects two items: a 1/2 in screen tear on a rear unit that the customer noticed and the crew had not, and a paint touch-up on interior casing the contract does not include. The screen goes on the shop's list against the return-visit date already set by the device replacement. The touch-up is written down, flagged disputed, and routed to the owner rather than argued. Step 8 signs the acknowledgment with both open items and the red-tagged unit printed on it.

Step 3 is the one to keep. That device passed its bench function, it limited the opening exactly as specified, and it failed only on the half of its job that gets used once in a lifetime.

References

1. The manufacturer's warranty document for the specific product line, which states the registration window, what is covered on glass, seals, frame and hardware, and whether and how coverage transfers on sale.
2. The shop's own written installation warranty, which is a separate instrument from the product warranty; the legal effect of the completion acknowledgment in step 8 is a question for the shop's attorney.
3. ASTM F2090 window fall prevention devices with emergency escape release mechanisms, in the edition referenced by your adopted code, for the release demonstrated in step 3.
4. Psychrometric chart at sea level for the dew point anchors used in step 5.
5. See related: the final operation and lock verification SOP, which must be complete before this visit is scheduled.