I recently had to remove my glass balustrading from my balcony, which had an aluminium handrail and toughened glass. One of the toughened glass panels shattered without aparent reason when my little girl was playing in the balcony. The glass exploded on her causing severe phsycological trauma and several cuts!

I have read a lot about "safety" glass for balconies such as toughened glass. If the balcony uses a handrail the glass can be only 8mm -10mm thick, and I have to say they are not that "safe". A good alternative to those unsafe balconies would be to go for structural glass but hey! whose gonna pay hundreds of pounds per meter of them??

I am very upset I was sold the idea of installing a glass balcony which made me spend so much money for a useless product.

I have now re-installed a beautiful iron balcony which give my house a better looking and proper safety at a fraction of the price. Hope this helps others..

Thanks for your warning about the dangers of toughened glass.

Yes, toughened glass could be stronger than normal glass but it BREAKS!.. it is meant to be less dangerous than normal glass and will break into lots of small pieces, but these pieces are still very sharp. When the glass breaks it explodes! I wouldn't recommended it for glass balconies, especially if a balcony uses systems with only 8-10mm toughened glass.

If the reason is to achieve a clear view, then structural glass will be the option, or even better solution than toughened glass could be "laminated" glass, made of two pieces of glass containing a sandwich of plastic interlayer. If the glass does get broken this interlayer holds the whole piece in place.