Collection: DIY Balustrade

What do I need to make my own DIY balustrade?

To make your own lengths of balustrade on site you will need:

• 7 x 7 wire rope in either a 100m reel or 305m reel
• 1 thimble and a ferrule for each end of the wire to make the loops (2 thimbles and 2 ferrules per run)
• 1 jaw jaw rigging screw or eye eye turnbuckle screw from the DIY range to tighten the wire (only need 1 per run as the other end will be directly fixed to your post fitting, then to your post)
• You will also need wire cutters and a swaging tool to compress the ferrule and complete the swage.
• All DIY balustrading can be swaged with a standard hand swaging tool or hydraulic tool (if you are going to use a hydraulic swaging tool we'd recommend using the pro balustrade fittings and wire)
• Then you just need to decide how you want to fix it to your posts, all post fittings styles can be purchased from our post fitting section.

How many do I need?

Regulations for wire balustrades mostly relate to wire tension, typically the underside of a handrail will be 960mm or slightly above and so to achieve the required tension the space between wires should be around 80mm, therefore most balustrade sections consist of 11 runs. To maintain the required regulatory tension the distance between intermediate posts should typically be no more than 1.5 metres with a maximum run length of 7 metres if using only 1 rigging or turnbuckle screw to tighten.

For long lengths your total metre-age may be split into 2 runs - we'd recommend trying to keep runs under 7m in length where possible as tightening up runs over 7m becomes difficult.