Glazing Bars Spacing & Spans

Glazing Bar Centres

Traditionally patent glazing was always installed at 241/2” centre bar to centre bar spacings as a 24” wide pane of glass was easy to handle and can fit under-arm enabling relatively long pieces of glass to be man-handled into position by one fixer. Another reason was that there was not the great variety of glass types as there are today and simple wired glass was manufactured in stock sheets 48” wide – cut one in half and you had no waste! Today patent glazing bars tend to be installed at ‘nominal 600mm centres’. At this width handling remains relatively simple and hence the cost of installation remains as low as possible. Wider spacings can be achieved with our 4-eddge support systems when spacings can be increased upto 900-1200mm, but this requires special consideration of all the site conditions. Wider glass, particularly double glazed units are more difficult to handle and it is important installation aspects be considered as due to weight and size, additional labour and equipment may be required thus adding to the cost. Please speak with Technical Support for advice.

Glazing Bars

Glazing Bar Spans

Lonsdale provide a wide range of systems suitable for both single and double glazing. Generally, glazing bars are available up to maximum spans of 4 Metres for double glazing and 5 Metres for single glazing.

Sometimes these spans can be increased subject to the design wind, snow and dead loads. Glass manufacturing and handling limitations means that single panes or double glazed units may require to be joined using cames. View diagram.

Alternatively, where long down slope dimensions are required, the glazing can be built up in a series of tiers subject to the glazing bar profiles maximum span capabilities. View diagram.

Please refer to our Product Pages where tables showing the relevant glazing bar spans for our various systems can be viewed. These are for guidance only, please refer to Technical Support for advice. Lonsdale also offer several glazing bars suitable for fixing on top of timber or steel rafters.