The 25% Line That Decides Whether You Also Buy Shutters

Phasing a window job is normal. You do the front elevation this year and the back next year, because that is what the money allows. North Miami has written a rule that changes the arithmetic on that plan, and it is the sharpest numeric line on any window checklist we read in the county. The city's Window/Door/Shutter Permit Submittal Requirement Checklist says: "Shutters are required if more than 25% of the openings of the building are being replaced on a single family or duplex residence; and you must provide Product Approval for the shutters. Impact resistance is required on all commercial retrofits regardless of size or amount."

Read that against a phased plan. A house with sixteen openings replacing five sits under the line. Replacing six crosses it, and the submittal then carries shutters and shutter product approvals as well. We are not going to tell you how the department applies that where the new units are themselves impact rated, because the checklist does not say and we have not seen it written anywhere we could quote. What we will do is ask, in writing, before a unit is ordered, and hand you the answer with the source attached rather than an opinion with a logo on it.

The wind pressure item is written differently here too. The checklist asks: "For each opening shown, indicate the calculated negative and positive wind pressures in accordance with ASCE-7-22 (required for 2 stories or more)." So the filing threshold in North Miami is height, where Hialeah's is building type and Coral Gables has none at all. Three neighboring cities, three different answers to the same question, on a job that is otherwise identical from the street.

Phasing is the normal way a window job gets done on an older house, and it has nothing to do with indecision. An owner replaces the elevation that leaks, or the bedrooms, or the openings a storm already found, and comes back for the rest when there is money again. Every city on this list sees that. North Miami is the only one that has attached a consequence to it, and the consequence lands on the sixth window rather than the first.

Which is the whole reason to count before the deposit rather than at the second permit. The line is not a penalty and it is not hidden — it is in the city's own checklist, one sentence long, and it can be read in less time than it takes to choose a frame color. What it cannot do is announce itself once the units are ordered.

The mechanics of filing are straightforward by comparison. The Building Department sits at 12340 NE 8th Avenue and its portal is reached through the city's online permits address, handling application, payment, digital plan upload and contractor registration in one place. Two copies of each Notice of Acceptance sounds like a small clerical detail until a package comes back for the missing duplicate, which is why we assemble the submittal against the checklist line by line instead of from memory.

1. 01Count the openings on the building and establish which side of the 25% line the intended scope falls on.
2. 02Price the shutter item where it applies, in the same number as the windows rather than as a later surprise.
3. 03Work out the pressures per opening and show them where the two-story threshold applies.
4. 04Get the association's written approval in hand before we start, because the checklist puts that on the permit holder.
5. 05File through the city's E-Services portal and carry the job to final.

We count first. It takes twenty minutes on site and it decides whether the job you are imagining is the job you are buying. Where an owner wants to phase the work, we lay out both versions — the scope that stays under the line, and the scope that crosses it with the shutter item priced in — and you choose with the two numbers side by side. Deciding that in February is cheap. Deciding it after the units are on order is the expensive version of the same conversation. Where the count lands close to the line, both scopes go on one sheet with the shutter approvals listed separately, so nobody has to remember afterwards which version was quoted.

Sources: City of North Miami Window/Door/Shutter Permit Submittal Requirement Checklist, with the city's Building Department page — checked 2026-09-24