A luxury Wānaka lodge retrofit, with Postless Finline balustrades engineered for a 50.04 m/s wind zone and sub-zero winters.
Luna Lodge Wānaka started as an interior refit and replaster. By the time Reign Architecture and Verity Lawrence Design had finished scoping the brief, it had grown into a full remodel, carried out within planning restrictions that required the building's original form to stay intact. The lodge sits five minutes' walk from Wānaka township and the lakefront, and now runs as a luxury accommodation offering with a digital front desk, online check-in, a ski drying room and bike lock-up, a guest lounge, and a dedicated workspace.
Viewtec, a UNEX Authorised Fabricator, fabricated and installed the UNEX Postless Finline balustrade system across the project's decks and Juliette balconies. Using slim 40 × 12mm aluminium fins instead of traditional posts, Finline creates a fine, repeating grid that sits quietly against the building's architecture, preserving views while complementing the clean lines of the renovation.
The challenge
Wānaka's climate doesn't leave much margin for error on an exterior balustrade system. The site sits at a 50.04 m/s design wind speed, at the upper end of NZS 3604's wind zone bands, and the balustrade was designed for Occupancy Type C3 (Other Residential) under Live Load Category A. Combined with sub-zero winter temperatures, any product on this building needs to hold its finish and its fixings through repeated seasonal extremes, with minimal maintenance expected in return.
New AAC façade panels were introduced around parts of the building, including areas next to glass sliding doors - the same locations where the Juliette balcony balustrades needed to fix back to the structure. AAC panels provide strong thermal performance, but they carry no compressive strength, so a standard fixing straight through the panel wasn't an option: get that wrong and the panel fails, not the balustrade. The fixing design had to transfer load back into the building's structural framing instead, without placing any compressive load on the façade panels themselves.
The solution
The deck balustrades used a standard UNEX fixing method, so the required Generic PS1 came straight off the UNEX EziSpec platform - no back-and-forth, no waiting on custom engineering for the part of the job that didn't need it.
The Juliette balconies needed a non-standard fixing arrangement, because their fixing point was through the new AAC façade panels rather than a standard deck edge. Timber packing behind the façade panels let M12 × 220mm coach screws bypass the AAC and anchor directly into the structure, keeping load off the panel and onto the framing where it belonged. Working alongside the project team, UNEX's technical support engineers then developed a Site-Specific PS1 for that connection, confirming it met the New Zealand Building Code.
The end result
Luna Lodge Wānaka now runs as one of the town's newer luxury lodges, with Postless Finline holding a clean, unobtrusive line across its decks and Juliette balconies. Getting there took more than choosing the right balustrade: it meant reading the AAC panels' load limits correctly, splitting the PS1 pathway so engineering effort went only where the fixing actually needed it, and working through Generic and Site-Specific documentation with UNEX's technical support at each stage. That's the kind of detail that holds up once the guests move in and the first alpine winter hits.
Specifying Postless Finline on your next project?
Explore the technical specs and PS1 documentation or get in touch with our team on 0800 333 777 or email [email protected]..
