ᐅ Is the option for an extremely large lift-and-slide door system structurally feasible?

Created on: 18 Apr 2023 09:55
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SuziundMike
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SuziundMike
18 Apr 2023 09:55
Hello everyone,
We are building a house with a developer and are currently selecting the specifications for the windows and patio doors.
The living room has a very large window area, approximately 4.80m (15 ft 9 in) wide and 3.40m (11 ft 2 in) high.
The building specification includes a total of 8 window and door elements - four large elements at the bottom with two tilt-and-turn doors in the middle - and four smaller elements above with two tilt windows in the middle.
Since the two tilt-and-turn doors open far into the living room, making furniture placement difficult, we have already been offered, as a special request, two central sliding doors (see plan).


Gebäudefassade mit Raffstores, großen Fenstern oben und Glas-Schiebetüren mit Geländer unten.

Our preferred option:
However, when looking at the future walking paths from the living room out to the garden, a central opening is not practical for us, as furniture will be placed there. We need side openings (from the outside viewed, on the left at position 1 and on the right at position 4), so essentially two “reversed” sliding door elements.
Or just one sliding door on the far left and the rest fixed.
According to the window manufacturer, this is not feasible for structural reasons.
I drew how I imagine it— is this really not possible? What do you think?


Handgezeichnete Grundriss-Skizze mit vier Räumen und Pfeilen


Thanks in advance for your replies.
Best regards,
Suzi
xxsonicxx18 Apr 2023 11:51
I can’t see any reason why that shouldn’t be possible!???...because of the skylights?
...besides... ‘can’t’ doesn’t exist ;-)
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Harakiri
18 Apr 2023 13:19
Just ask why it wouldn’t be possible—is it because the units without skylights are too tall? Or do you want to keep the skylights but the skylight frames are not strong enough to support the sliding door units below?

Regarding the opening configuration: another option (which we have, for example) is a three-part setup—fixed in the middle, with the left and right sections operable. In my opinion, this looks even better, especially since you don’t have a lot of width. Our bigger issue is that the two movable units are actually almost too heavy to operate manually, but we also have about 1.2 meters (4 feet) more width, although much lower height.
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Harakiri
18 Apr 2023 13:23
Addendum: Your opening scheme (K) should also be feasible – at least with common lift-and-slide door profiles/system providers.
rick201818 Apr 2023 14:23
Of course, this is possible. Even with much larger windows…
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SuziundMike
18 Apr 2023 18:25
Harakiri schrieb:

Just ask why it shouldn’t be possible – is it because the elements without the transom windows would be too tall? Or do you want to keep the transom windows but the transom frames aren’t stable enough for the lift-and-slide door elements below?

We’ve already asked. Our problem is that we can’t choose the window manufacturer ourselves and can’t speak directly with them – everything has to go through the developer.
Today, they told us it is possible – but twice as expensive as the previously offered option with the two centrally opening sliding doors.
When we asked why, they said this version is structurally more challenging.
And when we asked specifically what is structurally more challenging, the answer was simply “that’s just how it is”…‍

We need to think about what to do next. Nothing’s going well right now.

Update: By the way – my drawing only shows the lower part of the window system. The upper four “transom windows” are to remain.
The developer also wants to maintain symmetry here, so a three-part sliding door system won’t work.