2. The glazing must be designed to withstand the relevant wind loading determined in accordance with AS1170.2.
3. The cantilever glass balustrade must be provided with an interlinking handrail. (Refer section 2.9 of HB125-2007 “The glass and glazing handbook”, copy attached.
4. This document confirms that an interlinking handrail is required so that if the glass is broken, the handrail will stay inplace.
5. We are of the opinion that the handrail must be located at 1.0m above the finished slab floor surface. Locating the interlinking handrail at the top of a glass panel which is higher than 1m in height dimension will be too high.
Excerpt from the relevant British code
BS6399-1:1996 “In design, the horizontal uniformly distributed load line should be considered to act at a height of 1.1m above datum level (Australian case is 1m above the datum level) , irrespective of the actual height of the element. For this purpose the datum level should be taken as the finished level of the actual platform or the pitch line drawn through the stair treads."
Also :
"The handrail should be attached to the glass in such a manner that, should the glass fracture, the handrail :
a) will remain in position
b) will not fail if the design load is applied across the resulting gap.
c) Condition b) may be relaxed where the glass pane is an end panel and protects a difference in level of 600mm or less, for example, at the foot of a flight of stairs. In cases where the end pane protects a difference in level of greater than 600mm, there would normally be an adjacent structure to which the handrail could be attached, thus enabling it to meet condition b)".
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