How to Close in an Apartment Balcony
The traditional apartment balcony is an open area outdoor and surrounded by a waist-high wall of some type. In some case, this barrier is nothing more than a railing, while others many times it is a waist-high concrete block wall. You will need to build walls and a roof to enclose the entire project, if you want to enclose your apartment balcony, providing privacy and a greater level of comfort within a controlled environment.
Apartment Balcony
Balcony Base
The balcony base is the most important part of any enclosure. You must first ensure that the base is strong enough to support what you want to put on top. It is advisable to consult a structural engineer whom knowledgeable about city building codes. It is highly recommended to also involve the building’s architect, if possible, to determine whether or not you need to make additional shoring steps to further strengthen the base of your balcony. In most cases, balconies are built strong enough to handle some basic framing weight added on top. Even so, always check first so you don’t have any accidents down the road with the balcony falling out from under the weight.
Existing Walls
Tying into the existing walls and continue the installation up to the roof is probably the best thing to do if the existing balcony walls reach to about waist height. However, if there are only railings of some sort, these will have to be ripped out first so your own walls can be built. An existing basic block wall enclosing a balcony is the perfect platform for wall framing to continue up to a roof. From here, you can mount wall framing with bolts and then attach a roof to the top of the wood frame. Existing wood frames are also acceptable as a platform as long as they follow the traditional framing rules with vertical studs set at 16-inch intervals. From there you can just add new wall framing and work your way up to the chosen height of your enclosure.
Framing Versus Block or Brick
A balcony enclosure is a basically different structure as a full-size house and it has an enormously heavy roof or even a second level above it. In short, the walls of the balcony enclosure supposedly not support tons of weight. However, they are still limited in some aspects because they are part of the balcony, which means the support of the balcony as it juts out from the building is the support you have to work with. Although some enhancements can be made to shore it up, the best option for balcony enclosures is to use wood framing, just like wood is used in a typical home. Full-height block and brick walls are too heavy to be considered for the walls of a balcony because they would put too much weight on the base.
Roof
After you have framed the walls and the roof of the balcony, you have to tie it into the existing siding of the building so that you can guarantee everything remains waterproof. Install flashing and guttering around all of the perimeters, and also install flashing underneath the wall siding of the building where it meets the new roof of the balcony, and down under the layer of shingles or other roofing material you use to protect the balcony. These could be asphalt shingles, clay or concrete tile shingles, or raw natural stone shingles. In general, you have to make sure that everything needs to be waterproofed, flashed and tied into the existing siding for waterproof protection.
Siding
Guard the exterior of the balcony by installing some type of siding material. The same principles apply as when siding a home, in this case, you can use the same type of materials, such as vinyl strip siding or wood shingle siding. You can also choose for metal siding or for wood paneling. Tie in any new siding with the existing siding of the building via flashing that underlies each separate material.
