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Capabilities · Commercial balustrades and barriers
SA Construct is a cladding, roofing and facade contractor based in Beverley, Adelaide, founded in 2011 and a Master Builders SA award winner since 2014.
A balustrade on a commercial building is a barrier that stops people falling from a balcony, walkway, stair, deck or grandstand. We supply and install glazed, solid and custom-clad balustrades as part of the envelope package for head contractors. The barrier fixes through the same slab edges and cladding we are already detailing, so we put it on the same shop drawings and the same programme as the wall and the roof.
Every balustrade post lands on a slab edge, a balcony membrane or a cladding zone. When a separate trade installs it after the facade, someone has to cut, seal and warrant those penetrations twice. When we carry both, the post centres, fixings, drainage and cladding junctions are drawn once and built in sequence by one contractor answering to one programme. A solid balustrade can use the same panel as the wall, so the balustrades clad to match the facade come from the same cladding package and the same colour batch.
Balconies and walkways on apartment and mixed-use buildings, stairs and voids in schools and public buildings, roof terraces, and crowd areas. Crowd areas such as grandstands and stations carry the highest barrier loads under AS/NZS 1170.1. Roof edges that only maintenance staff reach are a different job: see roof-edge guardrails.
Projects
We have not yet published a project page that features a balustrade. Our projects show the cladding and roofing packages a balustrade sits inside, and these pages cover the related work:
Questions
AS/NZS 1170.1 sets the barrier loads by occupancy: a line load along the top edge, a load spread over the infill and a point load. Areas where crowds gather, such as grandstands and foyers, take higher loads than offices or apartment balconies. The structural engineer certifies the posts, the base fixings and the slab or steel they fix into.
Under NCC 2022 Volume One, a barrier is needed wherever a floor, balcony, stair or roof is 1 m or more above the surface below. It must be at least 1 m high, or 865 mm along stairs and ramps. Openings must not let a 125 mm sphere through. Where the fall is more than 4 m, the barrier must not have horizontal or near-horizontal elements between 150 mm and 760 mm above the floor that a child could climb. South Australia varies some of these clauses, so the certifier confirms the final figures.
It depends on the glass and how it is fixed. AS 1288 sets the glass type and thickness for a barrier and says when the panels need an interlinking handrail across the top, so the barrier still holds if one pane breaks. The structural engineer and the certifier confirm which applies before we order glass.
Yes. A solid balustrade can be clad in the same panel, folded sheet or perforated metal as the wall, so balconies read as part of the elevation. The frame behind the cladding is designed for the barrier loads, and in Type A and B construction the cladding follows the same non-combustible rules as the wall it sits on.
Send the balustrade schedule, the elevations and the structural drawings for the slab edges. If we are also pricing the cladding, say so and we will price both together.
