Search the Community

Hi I'm looking for recommendations for suppliers of Frameless Balustrade systems. I've got a 20m run to enclose a first floor balcony and a bit confused by all the options and the crazy prices so would welcome any steer on who offers a good value product. Can this stuff be DIY installed or is it better to go for supply & fit?

Hello Everyone! I am in the process of renovating my balcony. I live in a row of 4 terraced houses all houses with matching balconies. The problem I have is that there is a real lack of privacy, we only have a small partition between us and If anyone of us are on the balcony it is impossible to relax. I have tried speaking to the neighbours to fix the issue but they are reluctant to cooperate as they don’t like change. Their main concern is the view being effected even though the view is across our balcony. My question to everyone is how high of a partition can I legally erect without permission? I know at ground level the height is 2m but as it’s up on a balcony I can’t find any information. it’s something we’d really like to sort as we feel uncomfortable sitting out there. any help would be amazing and greatly appreciated :)

I'm building our three Juliet balconies. And as you prolly know, I'm not a welding God . In fact one or two members who will remain nameless, ( @Russell griffiths, chief among them) really bruised my confidence badly.? So I have a question. Look at this - look at the way the verticals intersect with the horizontals...... For each of the verticals, as they go through the horizontals, should I weld both the top and bottom bit of the vertical bar ?

Warning: Long post. Questions at the end OK, so I know we've got some really clever technical people in this parish so I've got a nice little technical question for you. I have a feeling that allot of people are just going to say "use a structural engineer" but I like to understand things first as my experience is their insurance policies LOVE them to massively over-engineer. Here goes: Our front dormer has a Juliet balcony. My planning conditions state it must be timber and the idea is it will match the brise soleil slats. So I've been thinking that what I would really like to do is integrate the Juliet balcony into the cladding. Its taking from this sort of idea: However, for reasons I'm not going to bore you with I've only got aprox 40mm of depth from the face of the window and the face of the cladding. Here's the actual dims of my dormer: Now I've been doing some research and balconies need to meet a couple of point load requirements (as well as the height and gap elements of Part K of the building regs). As I understand it they are thus: Rigid and strong, be able to resist and not bend, buckle or break under pressure. Durable and suitable to the area they are to be applied to. Two British standards apply; BS6180:2011 "Barriers in and about buildings - Code of practice" which relates to the code of practice for balustrades in buildings and BS6399-1:1996 "Loadings for buildings - Part1: Code of practice for dead and imposed loads" which specifies the information on loadings. For domestic dwellings this translates to: Handrails: For external balconies 0.74 kN/m. This can be compared to having one averagely weighing person 75kg applying the full force of their body on every metre of the balcony. Infill Panels/Rails: 0.5kN/m. Now what I'd like to do is use the same cladding profile (20mm thick by 70mm) to create my infill panels. The handrail can be machined to sit on top using the same timber so that shouldn't be too much of an issue. Because of the way the doors open I cant easily have a centre rail so the span is going to be 2.94m. I could though devise a way to attach a bar to the bottom of the dormer which would rise up the centre. So, I was thinking that the solution would be to create a steel support behind the cladding. I can get the pieces of cladding that will make up the rails machined to accept this steel support. This is rough sketch of what I mean: So now two my two questions: 1) Is this idea crazy? 2) Where/how can I calculate the point load strength of any bar design like the above? Thanks for making it to the end!