LOCAL media in the Gulf region frequently report of children falling from open windows in high-rise buildings; these accidents are avoidable and can be prevented by selecting the correct types of windows and associated hardware.

There are several measures that can be taken to help prevent these kinds of accidents, the most obvious one being appropriate parental/adult supervision of children. However, this is not always possible all the time and it takes but a few moments for an accident to occur.

For this reason, there must be another defence against the problem, which is the suitable design and careful selection of opening windows.

There is a constant conflict between being able to open windows for natural ventilation during the cooler times of the year and preventing situations where children can fall out of a window. It is commonly understood that a child can climb through an opening if it is more than 10 cm wide and this is reflected in many of the safety standards throughout the world (for example, BS 8213 Part 1). This, however, poses the problem of limited ventilation through a gap of 10 cm which is unlikely to be enough to effectively ventilate an apartment.

In considering opening windows, there are a number of measures that can be taken:

• Positioning the windows high enough to prevent a child climbing up to it;

• Restricting the window opening to 10 cm;

• Selecting a window that gives the highest level of ventilation for a 10-cm opening; and

• Installing guarding to the windows.

One action that has been considered adequate to prevent accidents is to position a window so that the bottom of the opening part is more than 110 cm from the ground. However, once the building is occupied there is no control over where furniture is positioned within rooms, so placing a table on which a child could climb close to the window would reduce the level of protection to only 40 cm, subsequently creating the potential for an accident.

Closed louvres ... restricting window openings to 10 cm.

Raising the bottom level of the opening window to 150 cm above floor level would offer 80 cm of protection, but this could make operation of the window more difficult.

By far the safest way to provide protection is to limit the opening of windows, just wide enough to prevent a sphere of 10 cm diameter to pass through it. The restrictions used must be able to resist all forces likely to be applied to it and should be fixed to the frames with fixings that can resist these loads.

As previously stated, restricting the opening also limits the amount of ventilation that can be achieved. Some types of windows are better than others that open to their maximum, Top-hung and side-hung versions present greater problems than others such as bottom-hung where the maximum opening is at the top of the window and the 100 mm opening will occur some way up the jamb.

One of the best compromises is the parallel opening window which opens outwards and can be restricted to 10 cm, while allowing even ventilation on all four sides of the windows. Also horizontal sliding windows can be limited to 10 cm opening and can offer ventilation at each jamb without compromising safety.

The final possibility is to provide protective grilles to the windows to prevent children falling out. These, again, need to be of a sufficient height to allow for children climbing on furniture.

While the option for guarding can seem unattractive, it can be used to add interest to a building façade if skilfully adopted. This type of full-height guarding will provide one of the safest means of protecting a window.

A floor-to-ceiling side-hung (open-in) window can be fully protected with no risk of a child falling out.

A compromise must be sought in the design of opening windows in order to provide better protection to children. This should not be considered inconceivable; the cases of accidents of this nature are far fewer in other countries where windows are open for a much longer period in the year. The key to the problem is careful design and, in particular, the careful selection of the correct window type and hardware.

• Brital was initially established to design and market aluminium curtain-wall and facade systems in the Gulf region. Over the past 20 years, the company has grown significantly to the point where the product range available from Brital encompasses all types of facade solutions ranging from doors and windows through to structurally-glazed curtain-wall systems.