Standoff Balustrade

• The floating look. Nothing under the glass — the panels are held off the face of the structure, so the rail reads as pure glass. It's the most architectural of the frameless options.
• Premium, and honest about it. Standoff sits above spigots in the glass range; it's the finish you choose when the rail is a feature, not just a barrier. If your structure or budget points to spigots instead, Joe will tell you straight rather than sell you up.
• A properly engineered system. Point-fixed glass is engineered and tested to the standards — not a generic kit bolted up and hoped through. The calculator keeps your configuration within the parameters the engineering covers, including the substrate.
• The calculator de-risks the two hard parts. Fixed hole positions and substrate load are exactly where standoff jobs fail — the calculator sizes the panels and flags the substrate before you order.
• Clean off stairs and edges. Face-fixing suits stairs and slab edges where you don't want spigots eating into the floor.

A balustrade answers to the National Construction Code, with AS 1170 setting the loads and AS 1288 governing the glass. For a point-fixed glass rail:

• Height. At least 1000mm from the floor to the top of the rail — higher in some cases. The calculator sets the exact figure.
• Gaps. No gap that lets a 125mm sphere through, at the bottom or anywhere along the run.
• Load. The glass and its point fixings have to take the AS 1170 loads and transfer them into the structure without failing — which is why the fixing detail and the substrate are part of the engineering, not guessed.
• Handrail. Required on stairs and certain fall heights, or where the glass edge isn't a compliant handrail. The calculator tells you when.

It's an engineered system, designed and tested to meet the standards when it's installed within the engineering parameters — and the calculator only builds you a configuration that stays inside them. That's our Engineered to AS 1170 & AS 1288 approach: it doesn't hand you a site-specific engineer's certificate for your address — final sign-off for your property is your building surveyor's — but what you install is a properly engineered, standards-compliant system. If the balustrade also forms a pool barrier, AS 1926.1 (100mm gaps, non-climbable zone) applies on top, and the calculator handles it. Full picture: Balustrade Compliance in Australia.