Square One: Good Home Design Starts Here

Design snapshot: Cable guardrail revisited

comments (4) August 9th, 2012 in Blogs

Katie Hutchison, Contributor

Photo: Katie Hutchison

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This sophisticated, metal guardrail beautifully offsets the weathered, cedar stair, deck, and cottage it serves. The marriage of the marine, industrial, tech look with the wood, natural, low-tech context is inventive and playful. The curved hand rail is another fun contrast with the straight, hard edges that otherwise predominate. See another take on a cable guardrail in this earlier design snapshot.

by Katie Hutchison for House Enthusiast and SquareOne

Read more design snapshots by architect Katie Hutchison

posted in: Blogs, architecture, Design, Design snapshot, cable guardrail

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Comments (4)

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Posted: 5:03 am on May 15th

Jon709 writes: I too completed a cable railing for my house, but prior to buying any components, I made a quick stop to the building inspectors office just to make sure they didn't have any issues with it. Important to note is the fact that I ran the cable vertically, solely to ensure no one had the ability to climb the aircraft cable, as well as reducing the spacing from the standard 4" to 3.5", this way just in case someone leaned against the cable and it did flare apart it would not exceed the 4" spacing required by code. All in all my cable railing system was very cheap in terms of parts, I recall $17 for each 8' section of handrail, for me if gives the transparency of glass for a fraction of the cost. On a final note too many times in recent years I've seen cable railing done in magazines, none of which were orientated vertically, shouldn't code violations be removed from ads and articles or at least have a footnote explaining that this practice is not code-approved. Too often people see it in an ad and assume that it will meet code.
Posted: 11:24 am on August 22nd

nvman writes: I built a handrail that had some small horizontal pieces joining some of the spindles. The inspector mad me remove me for the very same reason. Children could use them as steps.
Posted: 10:34 pm on August 21st

semar writes: I believe I commented on cable railings before:
If children can climb on railings using the cable as steps they will.
Recent local case. Hot weather - people sat outside on balcony, child climbed on chair and fell over the balcony 4 stories below, dead.
Posted: 11:52 am on August 21st

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