Technical Resources for Architects and Builders
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Alumac has been manufacturing custom aluminium building products since 1970. Over that time, we’ve worked with architects, building designers, project managers, and certifiers on projects ranging from single residential dwellings to large multi-residential and commercial facades.
The questions we get asked most often are technical ones. Wind load certification. BASIX compliance documentation. Coastal durability specifications. These aren’t questions that product brochures answer well.
This library is here to assist in answering your questions.
Each guide is written by the Alumac team and covers a specific area of specification or compliance that comes up regularly on projects involving window shrouds, louvre screens, sun hoods, and external aluminium shading systems. They’re free to download and reference on your projects.
If you have a question that isn’t covered here, contact us directly.
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Available Guides
GUIDE 1: PUBLISHED
Wind Load and Engineer Certification for Window Shrouds
A window shroud is a cantilevered structural element. Its performance under wind loading depends on the product, the fixing design, and the substrate it’s fixed into, and all three need to work together.
This guide covers wind load classifications under the NCC and AS/NZS 1170.2, what engineer certification does and does not cover, fixing design requirements for common substrates, and the specification questions that should be resolved before fabrication is confirmed.
Written by: Greg Wallis, Manager at Alumac Industries.
Suitable for: architects, builders, building designers, project managers, certifiers.
GUIDE 2: PUBLISHED
How to Specify Window Shrouds for BASIX Compliance
For: Architects, building designers, BASIX assessors
Window shrouds can contribute meaningfully to meeting BASIX solar heat gain requirements on NSW residential projects. In some cases they’re the most cost-effective path to compliance, allowing larger glazing areas without requiring higher-specification glass or additional insulation. But knowing how to specify them correctly requires more than installing a hood above a north-facing window.
This guide covers how BASIX treats external shading elements, why projection depth is the critical variable, what the BASIX tool accepts as compliant shading input, the orientations where window shrouds are and are not effective, and a practical checklist of the information needed before a shroud specification is finalised.
It also covers what window shrouds cannot do, including the limits of horizontal elements on east and west elevations, and what happens when shading fractions are overstated in the BASIX tool.
[GUIDE 3 — COMING SOON]
Facade Build-Up and Window Shroud Sizing: Getting the Detail Right
For: Architects, building designers, specifiers
A window shroud detailed for a 12mm rendered wall will look wrong on a 50mm battened and clad facade. This is one of the most common sources of shroud specification errors on residential and multi-residential projects: dimensions are confirmed before the facade build-up is properly resolved, and by the time the discrepancy surfaces, fabrication is already underway.
This guide covers why facade build-up matters more than window size alone, the four variables that determine the correct shroud dimensions (window frame position, facade thickness, fixing substrate, and reveal depth), the most common specification errors and how they occur, a practical step-by-step process for working through shroud dimensions on a new project, and how to achieve visual consistency across multi-window projects.
It also covers when to bring a fabricator into the detail conversation, and why design development is the right time, not after construction documentation is complete.
Email to be notified when available
GUIDE 4 — COMING SOON
Window Shroud Installation and the Critical Path: What Builders Need to Know
For: Builders, project managers, site supervisors
For architects, a window shroud is a design decision. For a builder, it’s a scheduling problem. Getting the conversation wrong at design development stage costs time and money on site.
This guide covers what makes window shrouds a critical path item (and what takes them off it), how exposed and concealed fixing systems differ in their installation sequence and programme implications, why lead times catch builders out more often than they should, how to brief the cladding subcontractor, and site delivery and storage requirements for large panel orders.
It also works through the typical sequence of mistakes that leads to practical completion delays on projects with window shrouds, and what to confirm at tender stage to avoid them.
Email to be notified when available
About These Guides
Every guide in this library is written by the Alumac team based on questions we encounter directly from the architectural and construction community. They reflect real specification challenges on real projects.
They are not marketing documents. They won’t tell you that Alumac products are the only solution. What they will do is give you the technical framework to make good specification decisions, and to ask the right questions of any fabricator you work with.
Alumac manufactures custom aluminium window shrouds, louvre screens, sun hoods, and air conditioner covers from our Taren Point facility in Sydney. We supply residential, multi-residential, and commercial projects across NSW and beyond.
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