Your room side stays real wood you can stain, and the weather side is extruded aluminum under a factory finish. Sierra Pacific builds the window around a wood core and jackets the outside face in metal. Every unit is built to your opening.
A clad window is two materials doing one job. The wood sits on the room side where you see it and the metal goes outside where the sun is. How each one is made and finished decides how it holds up on a west wall in Palm Desert.
The window is wood. The outside face is jacketed in extruded aluminum, so sun and blowing sand never touch timber. Inside you get a wood jamb and a wood sash in a species you choose, and it ships natural, primed, or stained and painted at the plant. Sierra Pacific's own line for it is beautiful inside, low maintenance outside.
Color is powder coated on at the plant, not brushed on at your house. Sierra Pacific writes that finish to an AAMA coating standard, which is a published test for color hold, surface hardness and scratch resistance. They build to two grades of it, so the grade comes along with the color you pick.
July out here gets hot enough that a dark exterior face runs hotter than the air around it, and what takes that heat is aluminum under a baked coating. The timber sits behind the metal, out of the sun and out of the grit the wind carries. Sierra Pacific also treats the wood with CoreGuard Plus, which they describe as a water-based treatment carrying fungicides and insecticides that can reach the core of the piece. The parent company is a timber business before it is a window business, and it manages its own forestland in California, Oregon and Washington.
Cladding is the metal skin that keeps weather off the wood, and there are two ways to make it. Read the panels below as a thickness comparison. Sierra Pacific's whole case for this line rests on which of the two they use.
A thin sheet, bent to shape
A flat coil of aluminum is fed through rollers until it wraps the wood. It is the common way to clad a wood window, and the finished skin ends up as thick as the sheet that went into the rollers.
A solid profile, pushed through a die
Sierra Pacific pushes hot aluminum through a shaped die, so the cladding leaves the plant as a rigid section instead of a wrapped skin. Their brochures put it at least twice as thick as roll-form and tie that to dent resistance. Roll-form is the comparison they pick themselves.
These four are not a ladder. Which one you want turns on what your room side has to be and how wide the opening is. Whether the wall is coming apart anyway decides the rest.
Windows
Extruded aluminum over a wood core
Aluminum, vinyl and wood in one frame
Doors
Swinging and sliding
Bi-fold, multi-slide, lift and slide
Timber inside where you see it and touch it, metal outside where the sun is. Two of these figures are choices you make, and two are ours.
These are built to order, so a few decisions have to land before the factory starts. The city sets the permit fee once it sees the scope, so that sits outside your quote.
Two things get decided before your order goes to the factory, and both change something you will live with afterward.
Sierra Pacific bakes the exterior color to an AAMA coating standard, and they build to two grades of it. The two grades are not covered for the same length of time. Matte Textured colors come on the lower grade only, so picking that finish also picks the shorter term. We settle which grade your order carries on the drawing, before anything goes to the factory.
Wide enough to take out most of a wall. A bi-fold runs on as many as eight panels, and a lift and slide reaches the same width at ten feet tall. That one is certified to PG50, a tested rating for the wind and water a unit stands up to. Your opening gets measured and drawn before anything is ordered, so read the printed figure as a ceiling.
Sierra Pacific writes one warranty with different lengths for different parts of the window, and it moves to the next owner with the house.
| What it covers | How long | What that means for you |
|---|---|---|
| Exterior finish, higher coating grade | 30 years | Sierra Pacific's longest term, and it covers the baked exterior color. |
| Exterior finish, lower coating grade | 10 years | Some color collections and some door programs are built on this grade. |
| Insulated glass | 20 years | The sealed glass unit carries its own term, apart from the finish. |
| Parts | 10 years | Sierra Pacific's term on the parts they make. |
| Sierra Pacific labor | 2 years | Theirs, not ours. Our own warranty is answered in the questions below. |
Exact terms move with the product line and the configuration, so we confirm yours before the order goes in.
Sierra Pacific belongs in a house where the inside of the window matters as much as the outside. Stained alder in a great room, or a double hung carrying the sash proportions an older Palm Springs place was built with. A run of casements down one elevation, because that is the wall the light comes through. The wood you see from the sofa is what you look at every day, and that lasts as long as you own the house.
It is more window than a plain like-for-like swap needs. A dozen sliders on a tract home in Indio, with the stucco left alone, is a different job, and we will say so when we measure. If the walls are open or the drawings are still moving, that is the moment to choose, because a change order later costs more than a decision now.
These are Sierra Pacific's own photographs, not our jobs. They are here so you can see how a dark clad frame reads from inside a room before you pick a color.
The metal outside asks nothing of you. The wood inside is a different conversation, and Sierra Pacific is direct about it in print.
Color, grain and density change piece to piece, even in lumber cut from one tree, and stain lands differently on each. Ponderosa pine, alder and black walnut will not take the same stain the same way. Sierra Pacific does not guarantee results for color or grain consistency, and states that touch-up of the finish in the field should be expected. So look at real wood before you pick a species, and expect a run of windows to carry some variety.
Sierra Pacific notes that veneer wrap may be used on select components, so not every piece of a unit is solid stock of the species you chose. Ask which parts, on the unit you are ordering.
The clad face is powder coated, so warm water and a mild soap are enough. Leave solvents and abrasive pads alone. The wind through the San Gorgonio Pass carries grit all summer, so get it out of the sill and the track before it grinds anything.
These come up at the counter, and these are the answers we give there.
Not the way a vinyl flush fin retrofit window does. Nothing in the brochures we hold describes a flush fin or a Z-bar, which are the flat flanges that lap over the frame you already have.
What Sierra Pacific does publish is a replacement program called Transcend, printed with four routes. A sash replacement system for double hung windows. H3 pocket or insert windows that go into the frame you have. An H3 full frame replacement line. And the complete made-to-order premium line. The H3 double hung is listed either with a nailing fin for new construction or as an insert for replacement. That detail sits in a separate catalog we ask for by name, so tell us the job and we will get it.
There are two warranties and they come from different places. We warranty our installations for a year and stand behind our work. Typically manufacturers would offer a limited lifetime warranty or 10 year warranty on their products (you would need to refer to each manufacturer for their respective warranties).
Sierra Pacific's own terms are set out in the table above. After our first year we still come out. There is a charge for the visit, and our office files the manufacturer claim and books the repair for you.
Yes, all of them. Every installer is a W-2 employee on our payroll, so no subcontractor sits in the middle of your job. When something needs fixing you deal with us. You call one number, and it is the same number you called to buy the thing.
We have been on Saint Charles Place since 1986 and we are licensed as CSLB 906636, which you can look up yourself at cslb.ca.gov.
Yes. One entry door, one patio slider, one bad window in a bedroom. That is a normal call and we take it. A front door counts, and Sierra Pacific clads a pivot, a Dutch door and panel doors in the same wood and color as your windows.
A single opening in clad wood is still made to order, so it gets measured and drawn the same way a whole house does. Bring photos and a rough size to Saint Charles Place and we can tell you a good deal before anybody drives out to you.
Three of these happen without anyone in your living room.
A piece of extruded cladding and a stained wood jamb tell you more in your hands than this page can. Ask for them when you come in. We are at 75-100 Saint Charles Place in Palm Desert, open Monday to Friday, 7:30 AM to 4:30 PM, and the phone is (760) 773-1053. Family owned since 1986, CSLB 906636, an authorized Sierra Pacific dealer, and our own crews on every job from Palm Springs to Indio.
