Bespoke luxury glazing in a posh house in Radlett with triple glazed sliding glass doors
This stunning, bespoke house built in Radlett creates a striking design with very highly glazed elevations throughout. All the bespoke glazing created an indoor-outdoor living style for the homeowners. The bespoke glazing design included a wide variety of technical glazing integrations to achieve the architect’s design and performance requirements such as marine grade glazing for the indoor swimming pool area.
The design – by Ström Architects – created a H shape ground floor plan to the bespoke house with various wings housing the kitchen, dining and home office and the garage, swimming pool, steam room, hot tub and home cinema on the other length of the H.
This floor plan presented challenges for the architects in regards to glazing specification as many connecting and returning angles were required from the glass elevations.
The minimal windows sliding doors used here were designed with a combination of fixed, frameless glass corners and opening corner sliders. The combining of minimal windows sliding units with fixed frameless glazing provided a cohesive bespoke glazing design that allowed the different areas of the house to work together.
At the rear of the house, a sunken private courtyard is accessed via these slim sliding doors and a large deck with outdoor dining area is located just outside the kitchen/dining wing. Both outdoor living spaces are easily accessed via the minimal windows sliders and the flush threshold bases.
A double height glass elevation connects these ground floor areas with the central staircase and the upper floors.
The first-floor spans across the width of the H ground floor structure, containing the ensuite bedrooms and large master suite. This master bedroom has its own private balcony, accessed via large slim sliding doors.
The other bedrooms spaces enjoy the connection to the outdoors via slim sliding doors with integrated frameless glass balustrades for a modern Juliet balcony that matched the large glass facades below.
The ground floor glass elevations were over 3m tall, allowing the internal ceiling heights to be raised making the interior spaces feel open and expansive. As the minimal windows sliding system has a concealed head detail, the glass here was able to span floor to ceiling, with no framing visible at the head or base of the glass elevation.
This height, paired with the location of the project, meant that wind loading was a careful consideration of both the architect and the glazier during design. The design drawings were able to be run through our wind load calculation software to determine which interlocks were most suited for the design.
To achieve the required wind loads applied to the glass elevations, the reinforced minimal windows interlocker was used here. The reinforced interlocker maintains the 21mm vertical sightlines of the slider but contains reinforcement at the interlocker against strong winds.
Internally, all the sliding doors used the Type 4 internal key lock. This key lock is built into the 21mm interlockers so again, does not change or detract from the minimal design of the sliders. This locking type was the system used to achieve the PAS 24 certification of the minimal windows system and – as the build was a new dwelling – was a required security performance for the sliding doors on this project.
The typical Uw value for the minimal windows on this project was 1.37 W/m2K using double glazing and the standard aluminium interlock.
Of particular interest on this project is the swimming pool wing. Walled by minimal windows on two elevations, the internal swimming pool sliding doors were over 12m long on the courtyard facing elevation. These met a smaller two track sliding door at a 90-degree angle with opening corner connection.
Within the pool area, interior steel posts were used to support the roof structure. The minimal windows interlockers were designed to line up with these posts in a method known as ‘global alignment’. This ensures that all sightlines of a building line up for the best design visual.
Close collaboration with the architect and swimming pool designer was needed for this element to ensure the framing finishes were suitable. It is important to understand the chemicals proposed for the pool, intended air temp and humidity in order to successfully specify the marine grade finish required for pool glazing.
Here, and throughout the project, a RAL 7012M finish was applied to the glazing with a marine grade coating on all glazing around the pool.
Products Used: KELLER minimal windows® sliding doors with Type 4 lock and reinforced interlockers.
Architect: Ström Architects
Glazier: IQ Glass
For more information about minimal windows® get in touch with the team today.
Michelle Martin
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