.jpg)
Beneath the imposing skyline of the Langdale Pikes lies the Brimstone Hotel. The hotel’s new development of 16 extra rooms called for spacious, high end designer balconies, which Q-railing were invited to create across two floors.
Core objectives:
- Showcase the hotel’s forest views
- Keep guests safe and secure long-term
- Easy installation that is sympathetic to the building process
- Maintain the Brimstone’s current design theme
Using the Brimstone’s prime location
Glass fascias were the obvious choice for maximum light and visibility. However, traditional balustrades, often used to connect each glass sheet, would have interrupted the visual field. The Easy Glass Slim full glass railing was specified to eliminate this problem.
Long-term guest safety
The number one concern is the safety provided by the balconies, not just the aesthetics. Q-railing’s technical team calculated that the hotel’s balconies needed to take a line load of 0.74kN. Easy Glass Slim can achieve a maximum line load of 1kN, so it was a balanced fit.
Q-railing specified a top mounted channel and 15mm of heat-soaked, toughened glass. Historically, toughened glass has been a concern for architects because on extremely rare occasions, spontaneous breakage can occur. To combat this, Q-railing heat-soaks all glass during manufacture. Therefore, any unfit glass is eliminated in its factories and never even reaches the building site.
Understanding the building process
The Brimstone’s contractors didn’t need to make fitting adjustments on-site. Easy Glass Slim is manufactured so that all parts fit together neatly - installation of all 116 metres of balcony took just 2 weeks, with the glass taking only one day for each floor. The balconies didn’t need to be installed until the end of the project because Q-railing manufactures a dry-fit system. This helped to avoid potential damage to the materials as they didn’t need to be installed until wet work was complete.
The Easy Glass range has an integrated water drainage in order to protecting the strength of the balconies over time and because water won’t pool, guests will be able to use the balconies all year round.
End-to-end design
Clean, neat lines brought an air of quality to the balconies. Thanks to precision engineering, the balconies matched the hotel’s attention to detail and chic interiors. Easy Glass Slim’s components are intended to be almost unnoticeable, so creating elegant, sweeping sheets of glass. This attention to design is end-to end, right down to the last cap rail for continuity.
Technical considerations
The extra 16 rooms spanned two floors. Each floor contained different substrates, steel and concrete, which affected Q-railing’s choice of fittings:
- Stainless steel M12 bolts were fixed into the top floor’s mild steel channel.
- Q-railing resin anchored stainless steel M12 bolts into the concrete lintel of the bottom floor.
Breath-taking views
The hotel is now even better equipped to spoil its guests with stylish accommodation and a huge commercial asset: uninterrupted views across the Peak District. Installation was easy and fast, parts fitted together neatly and products arrived on-site pre-fabricated to a high-quality finish that didn’t require extra labour.
“The Q railing system has given us an elegant, minimalist solution for Brimstones’ terrace areas. The perfect product for this installation. Brimstone has been shortlisted for the best new build in the European hotel design awards which is testament to all involved” says Dan Visser, Sales and Marketing Director of the Brimstone hotel.
