Renovation: Window and Balcony Restrictors

I love space. Living in a tightly packed city, space is a real luxury. When we picked our new house, we look for ideal units with unblocked view as this gives a sense of space. However, when you have young children in the house, their safety takes priority.

Parents with young children should consider putting in some form of restrictions at the windows and balcony. This is to prevent young children from climbing out of the windows or over the balcony. The most basic would be Window Grille made of metal materials like aluminum or wrought iron.

Image from Pang Giap Enterprise (88) Pte Ltd

Aluminum is probably the most popular choice due to the economical price. It serves more like a deterrent. However, if your windows are along the corridor, you might want to consider stronger material like wrought iron. The disadvantage is maintenance to prevent rust from setting in. 

I see some other sites offering wrought aluminum which it says offer the strength of wrought iron without the worry of rust. You may wish to find out more. There are also other considerations like whether are the grille powder coated or anodized.

Many do not like the look of grille as they feel caged up and loses the sense of space. The other alternative is using invisible grille. But it comes at a higher cost.

Image from CSA Invisible Grille

The idea behind invisible grille is using thin stainless steel cables to restrict access while doing away with the caged up look. It is gaining popularity now as it offers safety with a much lesser compromise on the lost of spaciousness. There are quite a number of options for window ranging from fixed to casement to sliding. 

Image from CSA Invisible Grille

This is also a very popular option for balcony. In fact, we installed invisible grille for our balcony from CSA Invisible Grille. Do find out more about the materials the different companies are using and to check the reviews of others who have installed from the different companies. 

For our window, our ID Tom did propose something different. He showed us a kind of vinyl blinds for the window which looks very nice. These blinds are heavy to lift up, hence the idea is to keep it lowered and to hide the strings away from the children. Hence they will not be able to lift them up.

The children are able to turn the direction of the blinds, either to allow more light and ventilation in or close the blind. The gaps also allow us to open and close the window with ease. We bought the idea. However, as I am afraid that the boys could still somehow get past the blind (from the side or by crawling under), I have also installed window restrictors.

Basically its a cable system that restricts how much you can open the windows by. The advantages are that you do not have the caged up look and you can unlock it to open the windows fully if you need to. The disadvantage is because you restrict how much you can open the window by, you restrict the amount of wind or ventilation coming in from the windows. They do not seems to be readily available locally, hence I bought them from eBay UK.

Lastly, Daiso sells a balcony door restrictor that a number of neighbours find useful. It limits the opening of your sliding door. I believe it can be used for sliding window too.