You don’t often see balconies on houses built by the large developers. You will see them more often on flats. There is a reason.

Balconies can add finishing touch to a house when they are incorporated into the design in the right place, but they can also be a bit of a pain! – They can add value to the property, but if you don’t “think them through” and you put them in the wrong place, they can be something which can cost quite a lot of money and actually reduce the value of the property!

The main problem (and the reason why you don’t see them widely on developer’s properties) is, that they bring along with them “design”, “practical” and “maintenance” problems.

I will start by asking two questions:

1) Do you need a balcony?

2) Will you use it once it is built?

It’s a lovely thought to be able to throw open your bedroom windows in the morning and step out onto your “sunlit” balcony with the orange juice poured and the newspaper folded on the table ready to read!

It’s also very easy, while you are sitting down, sketching out your initial designs, to draw in a balcony from (usually) a bedroom, and to carry on with that idea (without giving the practicalities of it an real thought) through getting the final house designs done and the drawings professionally drawn up, then straight through to the Planning stage, and then to the building stage. – If you have little experience of house design and building, there is no reason (until you started to read this article) why you should suddenly stop all your planning and look into the “pro’s and con’s”.

The person who does your drawings for you is not necessarily going to question your need for a balcony. – He / she will just think to themselves: “You have drawn it, so you MUST need or want it”. SO, it’s up to you to KNOW that a balcony is a good idea for your property before you get too far “down the line”. – These people don’t always get involved in an advisory capacity, they just do what you ask them to!

It’s not a problem to add a balcony to any set of design sketches or full drawings. - The location of balconies will, more often than not, be off a main bedroom or an open living / sitting area on a landing, or, occasionally if the location of the plot offers a pleasant view from one particular room, the balcony will be positioned there.

Before you add the “few lines” to your initial sketches which indicate a balcony, just think about a couple of things:

I have seen hundreds of balconies around the country which are probably hardly ever, or even never used. Most of them tend to be on Self Build projects. As I have said, it’s a nice idea to add one to your design, especially if it gives a pleasant view. BUT, how close will it be to a main road? Is there a footpath which passes it? Will it be overlooked by neighbours? Is there a stream or river right underneath which will bring with it “clouds” of gnats at dusk (one of the two main times you would tend to use the balcony)? How far is the balcony from your kitchen? Where does the sun rise and set (year round)?

Humans tend to like privacy. How likely are you to go out onto the balcony first thing in the morning in your dressing gown, with your hair all over the place, if there are people walking or driving past all the time, maybe 20 – 30ft away? How often will you sunbath on it if the neighbours get a clear view of you from their windows? – Would you not be more likely to use the garden where you can get some privacy?

Are you likely to head up to the balcony at dusk if you know you are going to be surrounded by all sorts of flying insects? Will you have those barbeques on the balcony (which seem such a good idea when you sketch it out), if it means everybody “traipsing” through your bedrooms to get to it, and if you have to carry everything up from the kitchen at the opposite end of the house and a floor below? – Then clear everything away and possibly clean the carpet from the “mossy” footprints which have been trodden through because the balcony hasn’t been used or cleaned regularly and is covered with a nice green “fungus carpet”!

What about the position of the sun? – Will you use the balcony year round, or even at all, if: a) In the morning, if the sun does not hit it until 11.00am in winter, and only “hits” it for an hour from 7.30 till 8.30, in summer before “disappearing round the corner”? b) In the evening if the sun has gone again by 7.00pm, even in mid July?

There are four main ways to construct a balcony:

i) On a flat roof.

ii) Fixed to the face of the wall.

iii) Supported from below.
iv) Cantelever

This method is fine, and as long as the flat roof is designed properly, it should give a good solid strong balcony which can take the weight of as many people as you wish. BUT, how long will it be before you have to strip off the roof to replace it? Flat roofing generally lasts between 10 and 15 years before needing replacing. If you have handrails around the perimeter which go through the waterproofing of the main structural part of the roof, this can be quite a major and costly job. You also need to think about adding drainage to the area and create slopes so that the rain water will run off.

If the flat roof area is in between two rooms, will the sun get to the balcony for significant periods of the day - year round?

This method should be ok for a small balcony, maybe a small table and a couple of chairs. BUT, these balconies worry me! – I have studied “structural mechanics”, and I know that mathematically these balconies are safe, and in theory will not go anywhere! - However, if you think about it, when you stand on the furthest point out on the balcony, what does it “want” to do? – It wants to pull the “top” bolts out of the wall, and push the “bottom” bolts into the wall. That “tendency” is called “overturning moment”. Close to the wall the overturning moment is smallest and it increases as you move further out. - It’s just how it works! – As you stand on that point furthest out, or for that matter, anywhere else, you are also adding weight to the overall structure, which wants to make the structure want to drop vertically downwards.

The external wall of a new house is normally a cavity wall. - SO, if you bolt your balcony onto the brickwork, you are relying on the strength of the external skin of brickwork and the way it is attached to the internal skin to give you your strength to support the “overturning” and “downward” tendencies of the balcony, - and to stop the bolts being able to be either pulled out, or the whole skin of the wall to come away.

As I say, I KNOW these things are designed and checked for stability, but I always wonder how they will be in 10 or 15 years when the weather has been at them and on the one day when your family arrive and all decide to cram onto the balcony to make the most of the evening sun!! – Just a thought!!

The way I personally prefer to overcome the problem of the “overturning moment” is to add extra support at the point where the stresses on the supports are at their worst.

 You can “negate” the overturning moment by adding vertical support. - This would normally be in the two corners furthest out from the wall, and be in the form of timber posts or brick pillars which go down to the ground and sit in on a concrete pad foundation. - These supports will easily take a lot of the weight of the balcony and cancels out the the overturning moment. BUT, unfortunately, as it cures one problem, it brings with it another! (can you see why I am not a fan of balconies?). The problem with using supports at the outermost corners is that you are then left with the (not particularly pretty) supports often sitting right in front of your downstairs windows! – Often this room will be a living room (if you are locating a balcony in specific position upstairs it will normally be to make the most of a pleasant “aspect” to the plot. – Therefore it will often be the case that your main living room will be right underneath it!

Support posts tend to be made of timber, metal or brickwork. Neither of these options are particularly pretty, and they could cut down your visibility and possibly restrict a lovely view.

The other types of support you could consider are things called “Gallows brackets”. From the word “Gallows”, you can probably picture already what I am talking about: A triangular shaped support which fixes to the wall, which supports the underside of the balcony and then has a diagonal brace down to the face of the wall to give the required structural support and to help to cancel out the overturning moment. Visually gallows brackets are better than pillars or posts, and can be made to look “architecturally” attractive. – But they are are not quite as structurally effective as vertical posts.

iv) Cantelever

This method uses joists (or some other form of support) which to support the outside structure of the balcony, from the inside of the building. It works by extending a number of the floor joists through the wall to form the base of the balcony. using this method, the "overturning moment" problem is negated by the fact that the further out on the balcony you move, you actually have the effect of trying to "lift" the joist inside the building (in the same way as a see saw works).

This method of balcony construction solves one proble, but can create another. - The room that the joists run above has to be of a size that allows a joist to span (joists have maximum spands depending on their size). Also the joist layout has to be designed so that the joists in that particular room run in that direction, and Building regs will need to be satisfied that the joist loading aspects are all acceptable (which means calcs being done for submission with the main building regs application. 

Of the four methods I have described here, given the choice, this is probably the option I would personally choose. 

Something else you need to bear in mind when thinking about your balcony is the effect it will have on the light in the room below it. If you construct it using the flat roof method, this is not a problem (but this method will add a significantly to the overall cost of the project (based on the “corners add cost” principal discussed on the “House Design” pages).

If you add the balcony to a room which is above a living room, then, not only could the supports block part of your view, but it will normally have the effect of allowing less light into the lower room. This can be quite a major problem if that is the room you use most and it very rarely gets sunlight to it because of a great lump of balcony above it. – The effect of this problem can be reduced by adding extra windows to the downstairs room (if wall space allows), but again, when you do that, you will be reducing the “empty” wall area within the room where you can position tall furniture.

Apart from the need for replacing flat roofs, there is a maintenance aspect to all balconies. Handrails need painting, fixing need checking, supports need maintaining.

Maintenance is especially important where the balcony is simply bolted to the face of the wall. If the fixings, or the quality of the wall deteriorate, then the balcony could become a danger to its users.

Using materials that either don’t need maintenance of can easily be accessed and replaced will help with this problem.

One way to solve all of the problems I have listed above is to use the room itself as your balcony.

Instead of building out from the back of the house, why not consider installing a nice wide French door or sliding door to the room where you would be thinking of installing the balcony?

This would have the effect of letting the sun in to the room, and can be opened when only when you want to either “bring the outside” into your room, on a nice day, or when you want to sit at the opening and have your breakfast, then can be kept closed to keep the warmth in the room for the rest of the time.

If the room is a communal room, rather than a bedroom, you can still have your social events with the doors wide open, to give that feeling of being outside, but without the chance of it raining and stopping the fun!

There are lots of companies who provide glass “screen walls” which can allow you to turn the whole of a wall into glass if you wish, – which if the reason for considering a balcony is for the view, may actually give you more a an “open aspect” overall. – these screen walls are not cheap, but compare them to the cost of designing the balcony for Building Regs, the flat roofing, the handrails, the posts and foundations, the gallows brackets the maintenance etc. – Glass screen walls are also a very good selling feature on a house and could add more than their cost to the value

If you use the idea of an opening from the room to create pretty much the same experience as the balcony, you will simply need to construct a “fence” of some sort (which conforms with building regs), across the opening to stop you falling out. - This could be made of anything as long as it passes Building Regs. It could be railings, glass, timber etc. – Anything that blends in with your overall design.

If you opt for a simple “French door”, then this option will generally be far cheaper, and whichever design you use, this method will generally also be easier to design and construct, give more privacy, give full light to the rooms below and will not create “visual blocks” with supporting legs. In most cases it will also make the room where you install it, far more attractive. (add to that the fact that it cuts down the maintenance aspect significantly, and cuts out all the “worrying” structural connotations linked with balconies). – To my mind it’s a far better option.

You may have realised, I am not a fan of balconies!

I think that they are something which appeals to Self Builders and something nice to consider including in a new dream home, but in fact they often don’t deliver all of what we generally imagine they will, in terms of usability or practicality.

All of the points I have made above are very real and very common practical things that happen in real life. I have come to my present opinion on balconies after having seen many of them over many years.

I’m not saying don’t have one. – All I am saying is that before you make a decision to include a balcony as part of your design, you should at least consider all the comments I have made in this section before you finalize your designs.

Once you have completed the drawings and submitted them for Planning Approval, you are heading down a road which it is hard to turn off! – Even if you change your mind later.