Local Shutter InstallersOpenings · Survey
Arches and shaped heads
Updated
Roller shutters want a straight head and a rectangular opening. Arches can sometimes take a shutter on the rectangular part below the spring line, leaving the arch as glass, which looks like an accident.
Sun, in watts
The worked opening for Arches and shaped heads is 4.2 m wide by 1.5 m high, 6.3 square metres of glass. This figure puts 595 watts per square metre on the pane and uses a g-value of 0.7, about 2624 watts into the room if the curtain is up. An opaque external shutter, taken as stopping 85 percent of that gain while it is fully down, leaves about 394 watts and keeps about 2230 watts out. That is a noon figure for comparison. An internal blind does not get the same reduction. For Arches and shaped heads, use the noon figure to compare two openings on the same house, then let a measured survey replace the figure.
An internal blind does not get that reduction, because the energy has already crossed the glass.
On this opening
Shaped internal shutters or no shutter are usually kinder.
The same glass in winter
Winter figure for Arches and shaped heads: glass at 1.4 W/m2K, 6.3 square metres, a 12 degree inside-outside gap and eight night hours. The bare pane is about 0.85 kWh a night on that crude sum. A closed shutter cutting about 24 percent of the flow leaves 0.64 kWh and saves about 0.20 kWh a night, only while it is down. Open it when you want winter sun.
I would not order yet
Stop Arches and shaped heads if the solar panel would sit in a soffit with no sky, and the quote has no wired alternative. A photograph is not a manufacturing size.
Glasgow is only a setting for Arches and shaped heads. The streets there are not the product.
How to use the figure
The 4.2 by 1.5 metre opening inside Arches and shaped heads is there so a quote has something to disagree with. If the tape gives a different size, the tape wins.
The example drive is a wired motor, and the illustration is £4,636. A belt, a wired motor and a solar motor can share a curtain and still be different jobs. Compare those lines, not a single bold total.
What the survey still has to write down
For Arches and shaped heads, ask where the box lands, what colour reference will be ordered, and how the curtain opens when the motor is dead. Those three answers move the job more than a rounded price.
Leave the lantern, the side light and the next elevation off the order unless they are drawn. Arches and shaped heads covers one kind of opening. The house may have three.
When I would not order yet
Arches and shaped heads should wait if the opening is an escape door with no way to raise a dead motor, or if the front is the elevation a conservation area was drawn to protect.
A photograph is not a manufacturing size. Two quotes for Arches and shaped heads only compare when the slat, the box and the drive are the same kind of thing.
Questions worth asking the fitter
Is the price on this page a quote?
No. £4,636 illustrates Arches and shaped heads for a 4.2 by 1.5 metre opening with a wired motor, at September 2026 rates. Your survey replaces it.
Does the shutter cover every pane?
It covers the opening it is built for. Here that example is 6.3 square metres. A roof lantern, a side light or the next elevation is another line.
What if planning is unclear?
Do not pay the factory for Arches and shaped heads until a listed building, a conservation front, a flat or a shopfront has a written answer. Ordinary rear walls on houses are sometimes simpler.
What should two quotes share?
The same openings, the same slat type, and the same drive. Arches and shaped heads uses a wired motor in the example so you can see how much the motor choice moves £4,636.