Building regulation, British standards and loadings

The subject of loading is defined in BS 6399, and that’s called Loadings for Buildings and in it are different building types, usages and areas. The type or use of a building will change the loading required of course. Here we will focus on single family dwellings or houses and residential type of developments NOT public areas or areas susceptible to overcrowding.

Public areas and areas where people may congregate, discotheques, bars, restaurants will require more loadings than I’m speaking about, anything to do with that needs to be treated differently and referred to senior technical personnel as different rules will apply.

External balconies and building regulations

Currently speaking about external balconies in single family dwellings we will talk about the loadings. You will need to be familiar with what loads are required in building regulations. You will encounter different building regulations being referred to, such as Document K, Document N and maybe more. All these refer to two main British standards, one is British Standard 6180 from 1999 and that is called BS 6180:1999 “Barriers in and about Buildings - Code of Practice”.

BS 6180:1999

BS 6180:1999 gives the rules how to design and apply barriers (balustrades/railings) in buildings. The second British Standard is BS 6399-1 from 1996 called BS 6399 Part 1: 1996 “Loadings for Buildings Part 1 Code of practice for dead and imposed loads” and in it are specified the specific loads that the handrail, infill panels and other elements must be able to resist.


Load testing of our balcony system

How strong a balustrade needs to be

Basically going into the details for a moment, a handrail of a balustrade, in areas which are not susceptible to overcrowding for residential and domestic houses, will require to stand 0.74 kilo Newtons (kN) equalling approximately 75kgs of pressure per metre of handrail, that’s the simple answer of how much pressure is applied. In order to get a mental idea of how strong a balustrade needs to be, you can imagine a person weighing 75kgs which is about 165 pounds putting their entire weight on the balustrade run, one person every single metre.

That’s how simple you should view the loadings. To get into specific data it would be recommended to read BS 6399-1:1996 and BS 6180:1999 of which we have copies. These are technical documents but knowing them is an essential part of understanding what we do.

Measuring the loading on a handrail

The way the loading on a handrail should be measured or tested is in a uniformly distributed fashion. Meaning to spread the load equally across the rail and not to add the entire load and apply it at one point, this is also important to understand. There are further information and load requirements on the glass and infill panels, these relate to both a uniformly distributed load and also a “point load” which means a higher load applied to a single small point.

How load should be applied