In Association with
Project: Bespoke Curved Apartment Balustrades
Applying curved balcony balustrades
Description
This project was for Collins Construction, They had the contract for refurbishment works and had been asked to replace each balcony with composite capping rather than the previous wooden option.
For the standard right angle balustrades this wasn’t a problem. However the 3 penthouses had curved balustrades ,and the client had asked for every balcony to be redone. The product that had been chosen was Ekodeck. A UK produced composite product. Ecodeck passed my details to Collins construction recommending that I may be able to help.
After a talk to discuss it I agreed to attempt to curve the capping for them, not ever seeing or using the products before. The capping was a lot longer than anything I’d tried to heat before and it was almost twice the thickness of normal composite decking id already learnt to curve. So this was another learning curve to my belt. Luckily they had plenty of lengths of 5.1m long pieces of capping.
Preparation and Construction
Step one was to work out the radius of each balustrade. I found an online calculator that let me put in the length by the centre depth point of the radius to find the actual radius to draw out my template. I then set this up and started heating my blankets. Without knowing the temperature I had to be careful not to undercook the capping, it would become too brittle to manipulate, also I couldn’t over cook and blister it.
First attempt and the board bent perfectly. Not so lucky with the second attempt. I had to examine the board to realise that the build up of wood to plastic wasn’t as evenly spread as it could have been and the break appeared to have happened on an area of the board that had a higher amount of wood particles. The third board turned out well but the fourth board also snapped so I tried again and the 5th attempt was successful. So, in total 5 boards had to be heated to achieve 3 perfectly curved boards. We got there eventually and the balustrades could be fixed into place. Henry the site manager was over the moon, the project had been ongoing since February and it had taken them months to find someone capable of curving the boards. It was such a relief to complete successfully such a complicated project. I had learned new skills and abilities in the process.
