Concrete balcony- can I extend onto canopy ?

[oldsongs]

Hi,
First time posting on here. I live in a first floor maisonette and have a balcony out the front which sits on top of the entrance porch to the two front doors. This has a railing around it which does not extend fully to the front of the balcony as this section is an unsupported canopy for the front doors.
My question is this - can i move the handrail out to the very front, giving me a bigger balcony? It is a concrete slab which I'm assuming is re enforced with steel although I can't see any steel rods on the front face.
It must have been designed to carry the weight of people otherwise it would be an accident waiting to happen, people are always on them for maintenance.
Or am I daft ? Ta

 

[OwainDIYer]

It may have been designed to carry the weight of poeple out as far as the existing railing. The leverage of the weight of person will depend on its distance from the support point (think people on a see-saw sitting nearer the centre).

Also the railing might be set back so anything dropped over doesn't land on somebody's head.

Also the area of the roof beyond the railing might not belong to your flat or you might not have access to it, and probably not permission to enclose it.

 

[noseall]

can i move the handrail out to the very front........Or am I daft ? Ta

Daft.

Irrespective of the safety implications you are also introducing a whole host of weathering problems around the balcony rail fixings, both with dealing with the existing and dealing with the new.

 

[oldsongs]

Thanks for the responses. To address the issues raised - the canopy only goes out 2ft and the balcony is 4ft deep, so the see-sawing wouldn't happen, what with the weight of concrete. It's a private balcony belonging to our property. Dropping cups of tea off onto someones nut is a risk I hadn't thought of.
Had a roofer around the other day to price for re-laying all the felt and he saw no problem with my idea. This will solve current weathering issues at the same time.
Further nay-saying welcome.

 

[SimonH2]

Thanks for the responses. To address the issues raised - the canopy only goes out 2ft and the balcony is 4ft deep, so the see-sawing wouldn't happen ...

I don't think you got it.

With the railing at 2ft, there are not many people you can put on the balcony, and the furthest out they can put their weight is 2 ft (if they lean on the railing).

Move the railing out to 4ft and two things happen. Firstly, you can get more people on the balcony (so more weight), and that weight can be further out.

Your balcony is a cantilever beam, and it'll have been designed for a certain loading. Put more loading on it than it was designed for, and you risk pulling the front of the property off.
See this thread for example of what can go wrong.

 

[oldsongs]

Probably didn't explain it well enough (really needs a drawing). The balcony originally goes out 4ft to the rail, supported all around by the brick porch underneath and with the concrete slab integrally attached to the building. It then extends a further 2ft unsupported. Any weight on the extended canopy is counterbalanced by a 8ft x 4ft concrete slab which is attached to the house and has a pivot point 4ft from the house. The car port that collapsed just extended from the gable end with no counterweight. Still surprised at the damage done though !

 

[SimonH2]

OK, so it probably won't pull the side of the house off, but there is also the question of what strength the slab has as a beam.

As for the canopy carport, the weight has simply pulled a load of bricks (several rows probably) out of the gable end outer leaf - and left the rest unsupported.
You have to remember that the bricks aren't actually "glued" together all that well and a lot of the strength in a wall is simply from the weight of structure on top that's "clamping" each brick down onto the row below.

Bolt a big cantilever to the wall, pull down hard enough, and the row(s) of bricks/blocks attached to the cantilever will pivot on the row below, lifting those on top of it upwards and outwards. Once you get past a certain point, the whole lot falls out.

 

[freddiemercurystwin]

You are daft. End of thread! Whilst the cantilever may have been designed for maintenance it will certainly not have been designed for anything else eg a couple of people standing on the edge jumping up and down. And no matter how many times you bleat on that that will never happen you just don't know that. When you move out you have no idea who will move in or live there. And that is what a balcony needs to be designed for. And fixing a railing to the edge is very likely to fail too. You would need Planning Permission too which is probably unlikely to be granted and Building Control Approval as well which would likely entail ripping it all down and staring again.

Because some clueless roofer said it was OK is irrelevant.

Bonkers.

 

[oldsongs]

OK, point taken. It doesn't get a seal of approval. Daft quite possibly. Also daft is to state "End of thread !" and then keep writing. I don't recall bleating on about anything, just stating a case.
Daft to call a qualified roofer "clueless" when your qualifications seem to be looking like Freddy Mercury and owning a cat (will read between the lines on that one!). Maybe joining a quiche baking forum would suit you better.

 

[SimonH2]

Daft to call a qualified roofer "clueless" ....

Out of interest, how did the roofer know the internal construction of the slab ? X-ray vision ?