Glass Room with high wind resistance transforms patio

How can you enjoy your patio or garden when it's in an exposed, weather-beaten or windswept location?

This was the question a homeowner in South Yorkshire needed our help to answer. His large detached property was situated on an unsheltered hillside near Cannon Hall Farm in Barnsley. It had a lovely patio area which afforded panoramic views across open countryside – but there was a downside. With the location being susceptible to strong winds and rainfall, the exposed outdoor space was uninviting and under-used. It could only be enjoyed fully when the weather was dry and still. And, as anyone living in the UK knows, days like these are few and far between.

The solution? A Solarlux Glass Room with a massive wind load capacity!

Read on to find out how we turned this unwelcoming patio into a really special outdoor area that the homeowners can now enjoy in all weathers.

Glass Room wind resistance

Protection from the weather with a Solarlux Glass Room

Solarlux Glass Rooms are custom-made glazed structures designed to offer protection from the weather. They comprise a glass roof with an aluminium frame, which can then have single-glazed side doors and windows for extra protection from the weather.

This means that, when the sun is shining, the doors can be opened to let in the fresh air while optional awnings on the glass roof overhead offer shading from the sun. And when the weather turns a little cooler, windier or wet, the vertical glass panels can be closed. The result is a fully sheltered Glass Room which, thanks to the unframed all-glass doors, offers panoramic views of the outside.

For this project in South Yorkshire, we designed and installed not only our largest Glass Room yet but also our most wind-resistant glass structure so far. Our team in Leeds liaised extensively with Solarlux's technical department and engineers in Germany, headed up by our structural engineer and Solarlux’s static engineer. Together, we drew up a carefully-considered design for a glass structure strong enough to withstand the wind intensity at the property's open location. We knew there would be days when the wind would literally be trying to pull the Glass Room away from the house!

The products

A bespoke Solarlux Atrium Plus was the perfect Glass Room for our customer's requirements. Capable of accommodating huge areas of glass, large distances between posts and complex shapes, the Atrium Plus looks light and unobtrusive. At the same time, it's also extremely durable and strong.

The glazed sides comprise moveable glass doors, with large ten pane, five track SL20e sliding doors spanning the full length of the front and four pane, four track SL20e sliding doors to both the left and right sides of the structure.

As well as the SLM200 internal awning on the roof, the customer also chose SLM300 external vertical blinds for the doors, roof lighting and a lift-and-sliding roof window.

The total glass structure came in at just under 43 square metres in size - more than double the average. And yet it is able to resist a wind pressure of nearly 1,700 Pascals, equivalent to winds of nearly 120mph. When you consider that building regulations state all structures have to be able to withstand a wind load of 500 Pascals, it's quite a difference! It was also more than 300% higher than the wind loads stated in other quotes that the customer obtained.

As with all Solarlux products, every single glazed element in this Glass Room had been thoroughly tested for weather performance before delivery.

Delivery and installation

Because of the property's open location, our team were expecting to encounter quite a bit of wind during the installation. But there was more than the odd breeze! In fact, the winds on the day of delivery were absolutely horrendous. The poor Solarlux delivery driver, Marc, was delayed on the boat over from Germany due to the high winds. If proof were needed of how resistant to the wind this glass structure would have to be, this was it!

Proper planning paid off as ever. With our traffic management help and on site co-ordination, once the driver arrived, everything had been unloaded in just 40 minutes. All the installation plant then arrived and was unloaded before we cracked on with the last thing on our list that day, a meeting with the electricians to co-ordinate the cable for the client's jacuzzi, lights, awning and blind. Everything done and dusted, we were on our way before 2pm.

The wind was just as bad, if not worse, during the days of the installation. As we approached the end of the glass roof installation, Storm Babet hit the UK. Luckily for our team, we managed to complete it just before the storm reached full strength.

Despite its size, you can sense the sheer quality of this large glazed structure. We're fully confident that it will stand firm against whatever the weather throws at it - just like in this example of how a Solarlux Glass Room fares during stormy weather.