Door and Window Schedules: Type, Size, Fire Rating, Hardware Group, Glazing, and Frame Documentation

How to assemble, coordinate, and evaluate door and window schedules within construction documentation, covering type designations, sizing, fire-rating labels, hardware group assignments, glazing specifications, and frame documentation standards.

ARE · Project Development & Documentation

Overview

A set of construction documents without a properly coordinated door schedule is a liability. Every door opening in a building carries at least five variables that must be documented: type, size, fire rating, hardware group, and frame construction. Windows add glazing performance, operation type, and energy compliance data to that list. Miss one column in the schedule and the contractor submits a question. Miss several and the project bleeds time and money through RFIs.

Door and window schedules sit at the intersection of architectural intent and regulatory compliance. A 20-minute fire-rated corridor requires doors with matching fire-rated assemblies, tested per NFPA 252 or UL 10C, bearing labels from UL, FM, or WHI. The hardware on those doors must conform to NFPA 80 for fire doors and NFPA 101 for exit doors. The frames must match the rating. None of this is optional, and all of it must appear in the schedule.

For PDD, this topic tests your ability to evaluate documentation approaches for door and window assemblies. You need to determine what information belongs in a schedule versus on a detail drawing, how to coordinate hardware groups with door types, and when fire-rating requirements drive schedule content. The exam expects you to analyze scheduling decisions, not just recall what columns go in a table.

Essential

What Door and Window Schedules Actually Do Schedules are tabular documents that organize repetitive information so it does not have to be written on every floor plan. Instead of labeling each door with its type, size, rating, frame, and hardware on the plan, you assign a door mark (like D101 or 1A) and cross-reference it to a row in the schedule. The plan stays clean. The schedule carries the detail. This sounds simple, but the complexity scales fast. A mid-size commercial building might have 150 doors spanning 20 door types, 8 hardware groups, 3 fire-rating categories, and multiple frame conditions. A hospital could have 400 doors with electrified hardware, anti-ligature devices, lead-lined assemblies, and radiation shielding requirements. The schedule must capture every variable accurately and coordinate with specifications, detail drawings, and consultant documents.

Professional

Scenario: The Medical Office Building Consider a 60,000 SF, three-story medical office building with ground-floor retail, two floors of clinical suites, and a penthouse mechanical room. The project has 185 doors spanning 24 types. Fire-rated corridors on each clinical floor require 20-minute rated doors. The stairwells require 90-minute rated doors and frames. The retail tenant demising walls are 1-hour rated with 45-minute doors. Ground-floor entries need aluminum storefront with tempered glazing. The clinical floors include exam rooms, procedure rooms, a pharmacy with controlled-substance storage, and a small imaging suite with lead-lined walls. The architect starts the door schedule during design development. At DD, the schedule captures preliminary door types, dimensions, operation, fire rating, and material. The hardware schedule at DD is preliminary. By 75% construction documents, the schedule must be fully developed with hardware types, locking functions, keying requirements, and all details keyed to the schedule.

TLDR

Door schedules include: mark, type, size, fire rating, hardware group, frame type/material, glazing, and finish. Every column must coordinate with specifications and detail drawings.
Fire-rated doors are always rated lower than their wall assembly (1-hour wall = 45-min door; 2-hour wall = 90-min door).
Fire door labels must be factory-applied metal with raised letters on the hinge edge. Never paint them.
Hardware groups assign a numbered set (HW-1 passage, HW-2 privacy, HW-3 office, HW-5 storeroom, HW-6 exit device) to each door. The detailed hardware schedule in the specs defines every item in each group.
Hinge count rule: two hinges for doors up to 60 inches tall, plus one per additional 30 inches of height.
Electrified doors need coordination across architectural, electrical, and security documents.
Window schedules capture type, size, glazing makeup, frame material, fire rating (if applicable), and energy performance values (U-factor, SHGC, VT).
Accessible doors must provide 32-inch minimum clear opening; hardware must be operable without grasping or twisting, mounted 34 to 48 inches above the floor.
Steel frames per SDI/DOOR A250.8: welded (continuously welded corners) or knock-down (field assembly with concealed joints). Minimum 25% recycled content on federal projects.

ELI5

Think of a door schedule like the ingredient list on the back of a recipe. Each door in the building is one "dish," and the schedule tells the builder exactly what goes into it. Every door gets a name tag, like "D101" or "D205." That tag shows up on the floor plan so the builder knows which door goes where. Then the schedule has a row for D101 with all its details: what kind of door it is, how big it is, whether it needs to stop fire from spreading, what kind of lock it gets, and what material the frame is made of. The fire rating column is really important. Some walls in a building are designed to slow down fire. The doors in those walls need to slow fire down too, but here is the tricky part: the door is always rated for less time than the wall.

AREProject Development & Documentation

Door and Window Schedules: Type, Size, Fire Rating, Hardware Group, Glazing, and Frame Documentation

2 min read214 words

Door and Window Schedules: Where Documentation Decisions Get Real

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