Windows & Doors in West Hills
Cedarline Design Build draws West Hills windows and doors with glass area, escape openings and tempered glass laid out the way LADBS reviewers read them.
Glass area, added up against floor area on the energy sheet, is the tally a plan checker reads before anything else on a new unit. The reviewer at LADBS handles West Hills permits, so the windows and doors of an ADU or addition are drawn with that sum in mind. Glass is chosen for the energy limits, and openings are sized for egress.
The tally
The prescriptive energy path puts a ceiling on how much glass a new conditioned space may have compared with its floor area. An ADU with large sliders on several walls can reach that ceiling quickly. When it does, the options are fewer or smaller openings, or a performance calculation that trades the glass against other efficient features. The reviewer looks for the numbers on the forms to match the window schedule line by line, and a mismatch there sends the sheets back for correction.
Other lines on the review
Besides the tally, a reviewer checks that every bedroom has an escape opening of the required size, and that glass near a door, a tub or a stair landing is marked as tempered. New or widened openings need a header shown on the framing. Door landings outside an ADU entry are checked for their step height. Drawings that put all of this on the same sheets make the review easier to follow, which also helps the inspector later in the field.
Windows & Doors in West Hills: common questions
Sightlines drive placement. We lay the neighbor's windows and the main house over the site plan and look for the places where views would cross. There, windows are lifted high on the wall, frosted or fixed, while the wall facing your own yard takes the larger glass and the bedroom escape window. In West Hills those choices appear on the drawings sent to LADBS.
Yes. Cutting a doorway into the house for a JADU is structural work, so it needs a permit from LADBS, a header and a framing inspection before the wall is closed. The door and its landing are drawn into the JADU conversion plans, which lets a single permit cover the entry along with the rest of the conversion.
New glass must meet limits on heat loss and solar heat gain, and the limits follow the climate zone for the address. On a West Hills ADU the total glass area is also tallied against floor area. We choose coated, insulated units that clear the ratings, and the labels are checked against the window schedule at inspection.
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