Ontario Glass Railing Code — Plain-English Reference

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This is a practical summary written to help you plan. It is not a substitute for the Ontario Building Code, your municipality's requirements, or a design by a licensed professional. Every guard we install is detailed to the code edition in force at permit and, where required, supported by engineered drawings.

Guard heights

Openings and climbability

• No opening in a required guard may permit passage of a 100 mm sphere.
• Guards protecting residential areas must not be readily climbable between 140 mm and 900 mm above the walking surface — a key reason frameless glass performs so well.
• Base-shoe and standoff systems must maintain the sphere rule at the bottom rail gap.

Glass type for guards

Guards using glass as the protective element are typically specified as tempered, laminated, or laminated-tempered depending on whether the glass acts as a guard-in-lieu-of a structural rail and on the fall height below.

Where a panel is the sole guard element over a significant drop, laminated safety glass (e.g. 13.52 mm laminated) is specified so the panel retains fragments and residual capacity after breakage. Heat-soak testing is recommended for exterior tempered guards to reduce nickel-sulphide spontaneous breakage risk.

Loading

Guards must resist specified lateral loads applied at the top — commonly evaluated as a concentrated load and a distributed load per the code's structural provisions. Spigot spacing, base-shoe depth and substrate anchorage are engineered to those loads; substrate matters as much as the glass.

What we handle for you

• Site measurement and templating to millimetre tolerance
• Shop drawings for permit and, where required, engineered stamps
• Heat-soaked or laminated glass supply to spec
• Anchorage detailing into concrete, steel, wood blocking or composite decking
• Inspection support through sign-off