Aluminium windows and facade glazing for projects in Bali

Project glazing is a different discipline from swapping one unit into a finished wall. We take the entire opening schedule off the drawings, fix profile series and glass build-up elevation by elevation, then hold the tolerances that make it work: openings formed within ±10 mm, sills cast with a fall and a drip, fixings set before plaster arrives. Ordering sixty units at once also buys better sections and better hardware than buying them one at a time ever will.

Specification is where money is either spent well or thrown away. Most rooms on this island do not need double glazing; they need gaskets that seal, drainage slots that stay open, and laminated glass wherever somebody could walk into it. Bedrooms running air conditioning around the clock, and rooms sitting under the Ngurah Rai approach path, are the two cases where we will argue for insulated or acoustic units — and put the numbers in front of you first.

What actually kills aluminium joinery here

Three things, in order. Salt: within a kilometre or two of the beach, ordinary powder coat chalks and standard 304 fixings bleed rust down a white frame inside two wet seasons. A seaside-class pre-treatment and A4/316 fasteners cost a few per cent more on the order and remove the problem entirely.

Water under pressure: rain here does not fall so much as get thrown at the facade, and any sill without a fall, a drip edge and open drainage slots feeds it straight into the room. Half the leaking windows we are asked to look at have perfect glass and blocked weep holes.

Movement: a west-facing frame swings through 30 °C of surface temperature in a single afternoon. Sections grow, sealant that was never rated to stretch splits, and the leak turns up in November. We size the joints for that movement and specify sealant that can take it.

Glazing sequenced as a trade, not booked as a delivery

On our sites the glazing package runs on the programme like any structural trade. Openings are set out from the same benchmarks as the frame and built to a tolerance the frames can genuinely accept; anything more than 10 mm out gets corrected in concrete rather than hidden behind packers and foam. Frames go in before the wet trades finish, so render and plaster close onto the frame instead of butting up against it later.

Glass arrives deliberately late. Panels stored on a live site get chipped, and chipped toughened glass fails months afterwards with no warning at all. We glaze once the noisy work is done, protect the units until handover, and hose-test each elevation before the scaffold comes down — an hour with a hose beats a ceiling replaced in the wet season.