I have a 5’0″ french inswing door on the second floor for a future workshop. There is no balcony. Instead of a complicated exterior stair, I’ll be building a rated stair and door from the garage below. What I am looking for is a balcony railing that I can use to protect the french door opening and potentially even remove to hoist large equipment out of the door. Does anyone have any good ideas or resources on a homemade or purchased balcony railing?
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It's fairly common for a home to be built around here with a deck door but no deck. (Deck to be built later by the HO, presumably.) A more or less standard deck railing is simply built across the door opening.
I've seen similar, only from wrought iron, on old New Orleans style apartment buildings, where French doors open to no deck/balcony. Pretty sure that recall seeing hinges on some of these to allow them to swing open for furniture transfer.
Seems to me that you just need to build some sort of railing/gate that's code compliant re the ball test, etc, adequately hinged, and with hinges (or lift-off hooks) that are sufficiently strong to satisfy code.
Probably even a standard chain link gate would satisfy code, so long as an adequate latch were used.