Modern Glass Box Extension

Most of the houses we glaze are old. Georgian terraces in Liverpool, Victorian villas in Cheshire and South Manchester, stone farmhouses in Lancashire and the Dales. Here is why structural glass tends to be the extension that gets approved on a period home, and how the old wall and the new glass are made to meet.

People planning a glass box, link or corridor usually want to know two things: how long it takes and what happens in between. This is the sequence every one of our North West projects follows, from the first site visit in Cheshire, Lancashire or Merseyside to the day the glass goes in.

The two worries every client raises about a glass room are that it will be freezing in winter and a greenhouse in summer. Both used to be true. Here is how modern structural glazing is specified so that neither is — and what we watch for on North West projects in particular.

Manchester's housing stock — red-brick Victorian terraces and villas, Edwardian semis in Didsbury, Chorlton, Sale and Altrincham — is almost ideal for a frameless glass box. Here is why, and the three practical issues that come up on nearly every Manchester project.

Clients ask what is holding the roof up on a glass box, and the answer is usually more glass. This is a plain-English look at fins, beams, silicone joints and the steel you never see — the parts of a frameless extension that make the parts you do see possible.

The three terms get used interchangeably and they should not be. A glass box adds space, a glass link joins two buildings, a glass corridor is a route. Here is how to tell which one your home needs, with examples from projects across the North West.