Local Shutter InstallersMotors · Survey
Whole-house control
Updated
Grouping a rear elevation so it closes when you leave is the feature people actually use. A twelve-step scene that also dims imaginary lights is not.
What the wall will allow
Keep the control boring: up, down, and a clock for dusk. If the app needs an account, ask what still works when the account or the router dies.
A worked pane
The worked opening for Whole-house control is 3.2 m wide by 1.5 m high, 4.8 square metres of glass. This figure puts 570 watts per square metre on the pane and uses a g-value of 0.63, about 1724 watts into the room if the curtain is up. An opaque external shutter, taken as stopping 80 percent of that gain while it is fully down, leaves about 345 watts and keeps about 1379 watts out. That is a noon figure for comparison. An internal blind does not get the same reduction. For Whole-house control, 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.
After dark
Winter figure for Whole-house control: glass at 1.2 W/m2K, 4.8 square metres, a 12 degree inside-outside gap and eight night hours. The bare pane is about 0.55 kWh a night on that crude sum. A closed shutter cutting about 18 percent of the flow leaves 0.45 kWh and saves about 0.10 kWh a night, only while it is down. Open it when you want winter sun.
Stop conditions
Stop Whole-house control if the only place for the box is a listed street front and nobody has written advice from the council. A photograph is not a manufacturing size.
Derby is only a setting for Whole-house control. The streets there are not the product.
How to use the figure
The 3.2 by 1.5 metre opening inside Whole-house control 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 belt, and the illustration is £3,388. 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 Whole-house control, 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. Whole-house control covers one kind of opening. The house may have three.
When I would not order yet
Whole-house control 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 Whole-house control 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. £3,388 illustrates Whole-house control for a 3.2 by 1.5 metre opening with a belt, 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 4.8 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 Whole-house control 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. Whole-house control uses a belt in the example so you can see how much the motor choice moves £3,388.