I've been asked to make a rail to go up the center of a flight of stairs(or possibly 2 flights, i need to confirm this when i go to look at the job on thursday) The sides of the staircase are already taken care of and the purpose of the rail is to seperate people going down the stairs from people going up. Do i apply the same rules i would if this was for rails at the side of the staircase? and is there anything else i need to consider that i may have missed?
- Thread starter Aesgarth
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Yes, same rules apply for a centre rail as an outside rail.
not completely correct as the 100mm max gap wouldn't apply as a centre rail doesn't present the risk of babies head being heldfast as there's no vertical drop of more than 600mm,therefore you need only supply a rail capable of taking a horizontal force of ..74kn .@ the correct height.
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Need to be careful with this one - some of the subcontract BC companies require the 100mm rule to every balustrade where ever it is. A lot of Architects are the same. Seen it a lot.
In any case you would be wanting to match up with the outer balustrades which would need to be compliant with the 100mm rule.
A centre rail doesnt need to be capable of taking the horizontal design load 0.74/1.5/3.0kN/m @ 1100 as there is no risk of fall if the balustrade failed.
Thanks for the replies. I think (will clarify tomorrow) that the only part of the staircase the center rail is required for the side handrails are mounted on walls so there's nothing to match to, however it would look better overall if it matched the ones further up the stairs - which funnily enough is around 100mm.
This will be to replace temporary rope barriers that are an accident waiting to happen, and as far as i currrently understand it will go up one flight of stairs and the length of the first landing at 90 degrees to the stairs.
This will be to replace temporary rope barriers that are an accident waiting to happen, and as far as i currrently understand it will go up one flight of stairs and the length of the first landing at 90 degrees to the stairs.
