Cold glazing of a balcony: an overview of popular systems

The tightness of the cold glazing method is undoubtedly slightly lower than that of modern plastic windows, but it is quite enough for solving utilitarian problems. With insignificant wind drift of the accumulated heat, the cold profile has a much lighter structure, most often it is sliding, which gives significant space savings. Let’s take a look at the popular cold glazing systems widely represented in the domestic market..

The most widespread is the Provedal system, created by the German company Reynolds and manufactured in Spain. It must be remembered that the cold glazing of the balcony from this profile is distinguished by high tightness, which helps to retain internal heat, and, in addition, it is additionally equipped with natural ventilation that can prevent window fogging..

In addition, a lot of additional parts allows you to produce cold glazing of a balcony with this profile, all kinds of loggias, as well as balconies, in fact, of any configuration.

Such glazing, subject to at least minimal thermal insulation of other elements of the balcony, guarantees the preservation of positive temperatures on the balcony. Of course, the above zero temperature directly depends on the presence of many factors: the dominant wind direction, the degree of thermal conductivity of the wall surface, the presence of many leaks through window blocks, etc..

The plastic coating applied on top of the balcony aluminum frame has a very high resistance to various man-made and unfavorable natural factors. Smooth glass with a thickness of about five millimeters, equipped with rubber gaskets, do not leak and provide increased wear resistance of the structure. And the presence of automatic latches allows you to reliably protect the glazed balcony from wind and moisture. Sliding sashes move freely on built-in rollers, which makes it possible to move even massive sashes without any special effort.

The use of structures of this type has shown that today the “Provedal” system is still one of the best in its segment and allows high-quality cold glazing of the balcony.

On the retail market, you can also find frameless glazing systems manufactured in Finland. These designs are very easy to use and very beautiful. But at the same time quite expensive.

Very similar to frameless structures and modern two-plane frames made in Sweden. In addition to shifting in a parallel plane, they are able to turn around the inner corner of the frame. Thus, it is quite possible to open the glazing span to the very end. The main feature of such balcony glazing systems is extremely serious requirements for the presence of parallelism of the installed planes – a decorative fence, as well as, in fact, the balcony ceiling. Unfortunately, our domestic builders rarely fulfill these requirements, which significantly complicates the work of glazing the balcony and, accordingly, multiplies the cost of cold glazing of the balcony..

The other pole of the quality scale is the installation of wooden frames, which are still used today for balcony glazing. Their main flaw can be considered the fact that in a big city, outside painting of windows is done at least a couple of times a year..

If these procedures are not followed, the wood will quickly become covered with microcracks. In a few years, such cracks will grow many times over, the window will lose its tightness and will have an unsightly appearance..

Not much better is the use of so-called “trolleybus windows”, made of ferrous metal, welded and painted on site. It must be remembered that after a couple of years they quickly become covered with a layer of rust. In addition, installed hinged leaves mounted on this structure are often impossible to close tightly..

It is important to note the balconies on the top floors. Due to certain design flaws, they can be easily accessed from the upper technical floor or directly from the roof. To try to prevent outsiders from entering, you will have to make full-scale cold glazing of the balcony. Any version of modern balcony glazing is suitable here. The only condition is that the opening doors are tightly locked.

The outer floors of buildings often do not have mounted upper slabs, which makes it simply necessary to build a roof over the balcony. Practice shows that of the many modern roofing building materials available on the market, it is better to use modern cellular polycarbonate for ordinary translucent ceilings and galvanized sheet for completely opaque roofs..

The key problem of all these structures is the degree of tightness of the abutment of such a roof to the walls. The most successful solution to this frequently occurring problem may be the arrangement of a flat “mask” fixed with self-tapping screws and sealed with silicone sealant.