I don’t know about you guys, but I have been quoting a lot of large units so far this year. The stuff that you need 6mm TSG at the very least or thicker than that. If you look at the featured image on this post you see a huge unit I came across the other week. We’re not quoting for that particular unit to be changed, but it does illustrate my point about bigger glass becoming more popular. That particular glass unit was just shy of 4.8m. It was enormous.

A growing trend

In matters like this, I go to Twitter and ask if other people have been experiencing the same trend I have. Below is my question I put on Twitter, along with some of the replies. Check out some of the weights and sizes!

The sizes of those units are impressive. But what is causing this trend in large glass units to grow? Well I think it’s definitely customer driven. They’ve seen what can be done on programmes like Grand Designs with buildings that have huge glass facades and massive sliding doors, neither of which have mullions and midrails breaking it up blocking the view outside.

Frames are becoming old fashioned I guess. But it is important that a level of ventilation and fire escape is retained, building regs of course demand it. So not everything can be solid glass. However this is perhaps a more important and growing issue we need to think about if glass units are going to get bigger, and indeed the frames they are going into.

Transport, handling and installing

As glass and the frames they go in continue to get bigger, there are going to be problems when it comes to transporting frames to site, actually delivering the product to the installer in the first place, and the installers managing to get the product fitted in the customer’s property.

For most small installation companies who may not have the biggest office or storage space in the world, a 3m wide slider or fixed full sized window can quite easily cause a few headaches on the storage, transport and installation front. Thought then has to be given as to how many extra installers might be needed on that job. If a bigger vehicle is needed to get the product to site. It’s all well and good being able to make and sell these huge products, but it’s all the logistical work afterwards that is going to need some planning.

For the bigger companies with the larger vehicles, bigger storage space and greater number of fitting teams, these issues won’t be so problematic. But if the trend of big glass is going to become even bigger, logistics might be something for us smaller guys to have to think about a bit more often!

As always, all comments on this are welcome in the section below. And if you liked this, or any other posts you might have read on DGB recently and want daily updates send to your inbox, feel free to pop your email address in the box below!

To get daily updates from DGB sent to your inbox, enter your email address in the space below to subscribe:

[wysija_form id=”1″]