Low wall railings, things to consider when having a low wall railing.. Now this really depends on where you are, what stage you are at but i will section it out. To make it easier to find the bit you need.
Planning stage
I say planning stage what i mean is you woke this morning and thought wouldn’t it be nice to have a low garden wall and railings around the front of the garden. So how do you go about it. Chances are no Planning permission is required, but there maybe restriction on how high it can be. Sometimes you are restricted to a maximum height of 1mtr tall. That total wall and railing height. Unless you are in some sort of conservation type area, or the wall could provide a restricted to the view of the highway (usually on a corner of a junction), Planning wont likely be required.
What i would suggest is take a look up and down the street does any one else have a wall and railings? If the answer is yes then you are likely safe no planning permission required. But don’t take the chance, make a call or email to the local authority planning office, tell them you want to put up a wall and railings on the front of your property and ask the Question do i need planning consent. Chances are the answer will be NO, but you may get told it can only be a maximum height of X high without planning consent. I would suggest you do the contact by email and get them to reply via email.. The reason i say Email is you now have a physical record, so should you proceed onto the next phase of getting it built and there is an issue concerning planning, you have covered yourself. Because if Dave from the planning office say no planning required. Guess who is in trouble Dave at planning and Not you.
So now what do i do next. Well its now down to the design stage, and i don’t mean the railings. i mean the layout of the walls.
Design stage
This is all going to depend on the layout of the garden where the path is etc etc. So will differ according to lay out.. for the sake of this lets just assume. its 14ft to the left and 18ft to the right with a path in the middle. measurements are from middle of path to the end. Perhaps the first question to ask yourself is do you want a gate? if the answer is yes then the brick piers that the gate will hang on should really be a brick and half wide a 13 inch pier. A 9 inch pier thats a single brick isn’t really strong enough to hang a gate on but its fine for railings. how wide is the current path? if there is a gate there will it be wide enough to get everything in and out of the gate without having to lift it over the wall. in General a 1mtr wide (3ft 3inch) opening should cover you for most things.
Having access to a cad program at this point is brilliant, but you can do the same with graph paper and get a good idea of how it will all space out.
more to follow