Glass services from a working Lancing workshop
Thirteen specialisms, all made and fitted by the same team. Here is what each one covers, and how to work out which you need.
Most glass companies are one of two things. Either a merchant who sells you glass and leaves you to find a fitter, or a sales operation that subcontracts the making and the fitting to whoever is available that week. We are neither. Brooklands is a workshop on Western Road in Lancing with a shop front attached, and the person who templates your job works alongside the people who cut it and the people who fit it.
That matters more than it sounds. When a shower screen has to fit a wall that is 8mm out of plumb over two metres, the tolerance has to be decided by someone who has seen the wall. When a balustrade needs to pass Document K on a stair with an awkward newel, the fixing detail gets worked out before the glass is cut, not after it arrives on site and does not fit.
How our thirteen services group together
The list can look long. In practice it breaks into four kinds of work, and most enquiries land clearly in one of them.
Architectural glass that carries a load or a person
This is the structural end: glass balustrades, rooflights and walk-on floors, canopies, and structural doors, partitions and floors. These jobs are governed by the Building Regulations, mainly Document K for guarding and Part N for safety glazing, and the glass specification is not a style choice. A balustrade guarding a drop over 600mm has to resist a horizontal line load and stop a 100mm sphere passing through it. Get the specification wrong and it fails building control, so we calculate it before we quote and hand the calculations over at completion.
Interior glass where the finish is the point
Splashbacks, bespoke mirrors and shower screens and enclosures. Here the engineering is straightforward and the difficulty is in the measuring and the colour. A splashback behind a hob has to account for the socket positions, the extractor, and the fact that almost no kitchen wall is square. Colour is its own problem: standard float glass carries a green tint from its iron content, which is invisible over a dark colour and very obvious over white, so white and pale splashbacks are made in low iron glass or they come out looking faintly minty.
Repair, restoration and replacement
Glazing restoration and repair, secondary glazing, shopfronts and emergency glass repairs. Sussex has a lot of period housing stock and a lot of it is listed or in a conservation area, which rules out replacement double glazing and makes secondary glazing the practical answer for noise and heat. Restoration work is slower and more particular: matching old cylinder or crown glass, reworking leaded lights, putty rather than bead.
Cut to size, trade and public
Glass cutting and polishing and Perspex screens. Bring a template or a measurement into the Lancing shop and we will cut it. Trade customers, builders, kitchen fitters and shopfitters mostly use us this way, and so do people who need a single shelf, a table top or a replacement pane.
What the process actually looks like
Every job runs the same way, whether it is one mirror or a full stairwell.
You get in touch with a rough description, ideally a photo. We come out and survey, free of charge, anywhere in our Sussex and Surrey coverage. On a bespoke job we template rather than measure, which means taking a physical or laser pattern of the actual opening rather than trusting the dimensions on a drawing. The glass is then cut, edged, toughened where required and finished at the workshop. Our own installers fit it. If something is wrong, there is one company to call and no argument about whose fault it is. There is more detail on how we work.
Choosing the right specification
Three questions decide most of it.
Can a person fall against it or through it? If yes, it needs to be safety glass to BS EN 12150 (toughened) or BS EN 14449 (laminated), and often both. This covers balustrades, shower screens, doors, low-level glazing and anything overhead.
Is it overhead or walked on? Then it needs to be laminated, or toughened-laminated, so that if it breaks it stays in the frame rather than falling. Toughened alone is not acceptable overhead.
Does the colour need to be true? Whites, pale greys, and anything where a mirror needs to reflect accurate colour want low iron glass. It costs roughly 15% more and it is worth it on those jobs and pointless on dark ones.
Our guide to the types of glass goes into each one in more detail, and there are further guides on balustrade building regulations and what splashbacks cost.
Lead times and pricing
We do not publish fixed prices, because a splashback with three socket cutouts and a mitred return is not the same job as a plain rectangle, and quoting a headline figure that then changes helps nobody. Every quote is written, itemised and follows a survey.
Typical lead times run from a few days for stock cutting and simple mirrors, to two or three weeks for toughened bespoke work, longer for structural glass that needs calculations or a specialist coating. Emergency repairs and board-ups are handled the same day wherever we can. If a date matters, say so at survey and we will tell you honestly whether it is achievable.
Not sure which service you need?
Describe the job or send a photo. We will tell you what it needs and what it will cost, within one working day.