Two ways into a cellar, both in structural glass. Floor hatches: walk-on glass you stand on every day and open when you need the cellar, in gas strut, manual or fully motorised form, round or rectangular. Glass doors: frameless or Crittall-style fronts for an under-stairs wine store, or a glazed partition across a room.
Almost everything here is made to your opening. You give us the dimensions, we issue a drawing for approval, and nothing is cut until you have signed it off. The exception is our stock range of ready-made cellar doors, held in a handful of common sizes. Quicker and cheaper, if one of them happens to suit your opening.
The same hatch does several jobs: a wine cellar door, a basement or under-floor access hatch, a glass trap door over an old stone stair, or a lit storage display you look down into.
Of everything we make, hinged glass floors are the product that travels furthest. We ship them worldwide and they are by a distance the thing we export most, because a cellar door is one of the few architectural glass products that fits on a pallet and arrives as a finished unit rather than a construction job. Larger items like staircases and balconies rarely make economic sense to send overseas; these do.
Gas strut is the straightforward answer and what most people buy. The struts carry the weight both ways, so it lifts easily, holds itself open where you leave it and settles back slowly. No power, no wiring, nothing to go wrong. We make them up to 2000mm on the hinged side and 1000mm on the shorter side.
Electric takes over where gas struts run out. Past 2000mm, or where lifting a large glass panel is not wanted at all, twin synchronised actuators open it at the touch of a switch and hold it clear so both hands are free for the stairs. Rectangular to 2200 x 1000mm. It comes with an uninterruptible power supply and a manual release on each actuator as standard, so a power cut or a failed actuator does not seal the cellar.
Circular hatches are cut to the diameter of your cellar collar rather than to a catalogue size, up to 1500mm, manual or motorised. A half-moon leaf lifts over a fixed segment, so the floor stays walkable when it is shut.
Worth hearing before you dig: the diameter decides how usable the cellar is, not just what the hatch costs. The spiral below gets steeper and the headroom tightens as you come round the turn, so below about 1200mm treat it as storage or a display well rather than a room you will use regularly. Take the largest you can.
Our stock range is already built in common sizes, so there is no made to measure lead time. It only works if your recess already matches one of them, because the saving comes from it being finished before you ordered.
If the wine store is under the stairs rather than under the floor, you want under-stairs and partition glass doors, cut to the rake of the staircase. Plenty of jobs use both.
The frame can sit on top of a finished floor, which is the easier way round and the one you will see in some of our photographs. It leaves the frame standing roughly 5mm proud, which is a trip ledge.
We recommend the other way round: run the floor finish up to the edge of the frame so the whole assembly sits flush. The frame is identical either way, so it is only a question of whether the floor is laid up to it or underneath it. Decide before the flooring goes down, because it is awkward afterwards.
Everything is made to order and the clock starts at drawing approval rather than at the order. Broadly, a hinged or circular door runs 6 to 12 weeks depending on the options chosen, and can be shortened on DioMet Express. An electric door runs 10 to 12 weeks, or 8 to 10 on Express. If we miss an Express date the premium is refunded.
The sizes in the dropdowns are price bands, not fixed sizes. Pick the nearest band equal to or larger than your opening in both directions and send us the actual recess dimensions.
Being straight about what these are not: internal, dry areas only. The frames are not watertight and not fire rated, and they are not designed as the primary access to a habitable room. Cellars, basements, wine stores, storage and lit display wells are the job.
Worth reading next: our guide to glass wine cellar doors, the hinged glass floor FAQ, which answers nineteen of these in detail, and the glass floor building regulations guide. Looking after one is covered in our walk-on glass care guide.
Skip this unless you are specifying the job, or it is going in front of 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.
