Toll Bar House is a glass walled house in Devon, designed to sit low within the rural landscape while using large sliding glass walls to capture long views across North Devon. IQ Glass supplied and installed slim framed sliding glass doors across the courtyard and north-facing elevations, supported by a package of aluminium windows and frameless rooflights for additional daylight and ventilation. The glazing strategy allows the house to remain visually open to the countryside while maintaining privacy, solar control and a clean architectural rhythm across the elevations.
Products Used
Location
Devon, UK
Glass walled house in Devon designed around views, privacy and wind load
The design challenge was to create a highly glazed rural home that could maximise views without making the building feel exposed in the landscape. Toll Bar House is structured around a central courtyard, allowing the plan to capture daylight and outward views while controlling privacy between internal spaces and the surrounding farmland. The sliding glass walls were orientated primarily to the courtyard and north-facing elevations, reducing excessive solar gain while preserving the floor-to-ceiling glazed appearance required by the architecture. Although the site is not directly coastal, the elevated hillside position introduced a higher than average wind load, so the glazing package had to retain minimal sightlines without adding visible posts or mullions to the main glass elevations.
Sliding glass walls with globally aligned interlocks
Slim framed sliding doors were used along the courtyard and north-facing elevations to create the main glazed walls of the house. The door interlocks were globally aligned with the external roof support posts, resolving the visual challenge of combining structural posts with large areas of sliding glass. This allowed the glazing to maintain a disciplined elevation rhythm, where the door junctions appear intentional rather than incidental. For a glass walled house in Devon, this coordination was essential to preserving the floor-to-ceiling glass appearance while still working with the structural grid of the building.
Aluminium windows and rooflights for daylight and ventilation
Away from the main sliding glass walls, aluminium windows were positioned to provide daylight, controlled opening and ventilation across the house. The window configurations respond to the use of each room, from wide letterbox-style top-hung windows in the bathrooms to floor-to-ceiling tilt-and-turn windows in the bedrooms. Two frameless structural glass rooflights were also installed above the hallway and workshop, bringing daylight into interior areas where vertical glazing alone would not be sufficient. Together, these elements support a complete glazing strategy rather than relying only on the primary sliding walls.
Performance considerations
The performance strategy for this glass walled house in Devon was shaped by orientation, wind load and solar control. The north-facing glass walls capture daylight and views without exposing the interior to excessive solar energy, while roof overhangs provide additional shading without blocking the apertures. A target g-value of 0.55 was used across the exterior glazing to balance daylight with solar gain. The elevated hillside location required the sliding glass walls to accommodate a wind load of 0.85 kN/m², while retaining the minimal glass facade without additional visible framing, posts or mullions. This allows the glazing to support the architectural concept while meeting the environmental and structural demands of the site.
Technical details
- Slim framed sliding glass walls: 21mm sightline; max tested sliding pane 8.5m² up to 4.0m high and 500kg; typical Uw > 1.1 W/m²K; air Class 4 / driving rain Class 7A / wind Class C4/B5; sound insulation up to 39dB; PAS 24 security
- Project glazing performance: target g-value 0.55 across exterior glazing; elevated hillside wind load of 0.85 kN/m² designed into the minimal glass facade without additional visible mullions
- Frameless rooflights: glass thickness up to 37.5mm DGU; typical Ug 1.1 W/m²K; example Uw 1.2 W/m²K; minimum upstand 150mm; fall 5° to 45°
- Aluminium windows: varied opening configurations, including top-hung bathroom windows and floor-to-ceiling tilt-and-turn bedroom windows, used for daylight, ventilation and framed views
Toll Bar House shows how a glass walled house in Devon can use large sliding glass walls, courtyard planning and carefully positioned aluminium windows to create a highly glazed rural home without losing privacy or environmental control. This approach is well suited to architect-designed countryside houses where specifiers need floor-to-ceiling glazing, controlled solar gain, elevated wind-load performance and coordinated roof or courtyard interfaces to work together as one architectural glazing package. To discuss a comparable glass walled house in Devon, contact IQ Glass for technical advice on sliding glass walls, aluminium windows and rooflight specification.
