Frameless glass balustrades with no posts in the line of sight, fixed with side mounted brackets, floor spigots or a base channel. Toughened or laminated glass on structural fixings, with an optional slotted handrail along the top. Made to measure in our Sheffield workshop.
Frameless glass gets used for two completely different jobs, and they are not interchangeable. Getting this wrong is the most expensive mistake people make on this page, so it is worth two minutes.
A structural glass balustrade guards a fall. There is a drop on the other side of more than 600mm, so the glass is a safety barrier. It has to resist a person leaning or falling against it, which means designed and tested fixings and the right glass. This is our System 4 base channel and System 7 side fixed. If you are guarding a balcony, a terrace, a landing, a mezzanine or a staircase, this is what you need, and the fixing detail matters as much as the glass.
A decorative screen or fence does not guard anything. A pool surround, a hot tub screen, a windbreak on a terrace, a divider between two parts of a garden, a low patio edge where the ground is level or nearly level. Nobody can fall from one side to the other, so the glass is there to shelter, divide or finish an edge. It is built lighter, fixed more simply, and costs a fraction of a structural run. That is our System 11 patio glass fencing and our floor mounted spigot screens, and for a taller screen, our 1.8m glass windbreak.
The 600mm rule is the test. More than a 600mm drop and you are in barrier territory, and building control will expect a compliant balustrade. Less than that and a screen will do. If you are not sure which side of the line you fall on, send us photographs and the levels and we will tell you straight, because it is far cheaper to ask now than to replace a screen that should have been a balustrade. Our glass balustrade building regulations guide sets it out in full.
For a structural run there are three ways to hold the glass, and the right one is usually decided by what you are fixing to rather than by how it looks. Side fixed brackets bolt to the face of a balcony edge, a steel beam or a wall, which keeps the floor finish unbroken and pushes the glass line outwards so you gain the full width of the terrace. Floor spigots bolt down through the deck at intervals, the simplest option where you have a solid slab and want a light look. A base channel is a continuous slot that the glass is set and wedged into, cast in, surface fixed or side fixed, giving the cleanest uninterrupted line of the three and the one architects tend to draw.
This is the single most important thing to understand about frameless balustrades, and it is where a lot of cheap imported systems fall down.
A frameless balustrade with no handrail along the top is a protective barrier held only by its fixings. BS 6180, the British Standard covering barriers in and about buildings, treats that differently from a framed run. Where there is no continuous handrail capable of holding the glass in place should a pane ever be broken, laminated glass is required. The interlayer holds the broken pane together and standing, so the barrier carries on doing its job until it can be replaced. Toughened glass on its own shatters into small fragments and leaves an open drop.
That is why our frameless balustrades are built with laminated glass, and why we will not supply a handrail free frameless run in plain toughened glass whatever the price pressure. Where a slotted handrail does run along the top and is capable of retaining the glass, toughened can be acceptable, and we will tell you which applies to your job. Screens and pool fences, which guard nothing, are a different matter and are normally supplied in 10mm toughened.
Nothing here is a standard size. Every run is made to your dimensions in our own Sheffield workshop, and we send you an AutoCAD drawing to approve before any glass is cut, so you can adjust it and be certain it fits. Toughened and laminated glass cannot be recut once it has been processed, which is why the drawing stage matters. We offer a chargeable site survey if you would rather we took the sizes, and we install nationwide.
None of this changes what you buy. It is here for whoever is writing the specification or talking to building control.
This is made to order in our own Sheffield workshop, so it can just as easily be made to your dimensions instead. Send a photo and rough sizes and we will price it.
