Erinvale window questions: salt air, south-easter and which glass first

Almost nobody should. An Erinvale home usually has four or five openings doing real damage to how the house is lived in, and a dozen more that are perfectly fine as they are. Treating the house as one blanket order wastes money on the comfortable rooms to fund the difficult ones badly. We would rather quote a first phase properly, starting with the room that empties at four o'clock, and leave the rest for whenever suits your year. Nothing on this site requires you to do everything at once.

Because once sunlight has crossed the pane, its energy is already in the room. An interior fabric intercepts the light well, then warms and radiates that heat back into the space, so it fixes glare and only partly fixes heat. Intercept the same energy outside the glass and the pane never warms in the first place. That is why external venetians and roller shutters are the premium tier here and why we lead with them on a hot elevation, with a sunscreen roller as the honest, cheaper second best where an exterior fixing is not possible.

Five things, and all of them need a person standing in the room. Which way your best glass really faces, because stands point in every direction around the course. What is already shading you, such as a deep overhang, a mature tree, a neighbouring roof or the mountain shoulder itself. Where the neighbours' windows are, since privacy is often the real brief and heat the stated one. What the wall is made of and where the power is. And how the household actually lives, because a breakfast room and a sundowner room need opposite things.

A raked pane cannot carry an ordinary hanging blind, because the fabric sags away from the slope. Shaped and angled glass needs a tensioned system with the fabric held in side tracks so it follows the rake and stays flat. We template the odd shapes properly at the measure and quote them like any other window. Up high, we would also steer you to a smooth, dust-shedding fabric in a mid tone, since glass over a stairwell gets cleaned once a year if it is lucky.

No, and this is the piece of knowledge that saves the most disappointment. Every blockout fabric is opaque; what wakes you at first light is the line of light around the edges of the blind. Fitted neatly inside the reveal it looks tidy and leaks a hairline down each side. Fitted over the opening, wider and lower than the reveal, it is dramatically darker. Darkness is decided by the fitting, not the fabric, so keep the room-side colour light: a pale blockout is just as opaque as a charcoal one and far less oppressive on a grey winter morning.

Not quite. Even fully offset, the solid bands still let a little light seep at their edges, which matters in a bedroom that needs to go properly dark. Where a room needs both view and privacy, such as a guest room facing a neighbouring stand, the banded blind is ideal: line the sheer bands up for the view, offset them for privacy, without lowering anything. For a truly dark room we pair it with a blockout roller or point you to one instead. The sheer bands are also delicate and do not suit steamy en-suites.

It depends on exposure. A zip screen runs its mesh under tension inside side channels, held on both edges, so it stays flat in a gust that would lift and fold an arm-supported awning, and it can be dropped down the open side of a veranda to make it a usable room that is still see-through. Where a patio sits in the lee of the house, a folding-arm awning gives more open shade and a better feeling of sky, provided it retracts into a closed cassette and carries a wind sensor that brings it in before the south-easter arrives.

Erinvale is close enough to False Bay to sit in genuinely marine air, and chloride-bearing coastal air is one of the most aggressive ordinary atmospheres a fitting can live in. Cheap hardware pits, stains the wall below it and seizes long before the fabric wears out. So on anything outdoors we specify powder-coated aluminium, sealed cassettes and corrosion-resistant fixings as standard, and we tell you plainly that even good hardware on this coast appreciates an occasional fresh-water rinse. It is the one place we would rather you did fewer openings than accept a cheaper specification.

No. The roller shutters we fit are motorised aluminium curtains on the outside of the glass for heat, glare and full blackout, with the bonus of quiet and a shield when a hail front rolls over the basin. They are not certified security barriers. If a security rating is what you are after, say so and we will quote that as a separate product. As shading, they suit a room that wants more than shade: shift-workers, late sleepers and anyone who wants darkness on demand.

Anything bolted to the outside, such as an external venetian headbox, a roller shutter box, a screen channel or an awning cassette, changes the elevation, so assume it needs sign-off. We do not hold Erinvale's guideline document and we do not quote from it; the only reliable version is the one you obtain from the estate. What we do is work in neutral, estate-friendly colourways, colour-match to your render, stone or joinery, and prepare the elevation photograph, dimensions, colour reference and fixing detail for you to submit. Manufacture is held until you have an answer, and we never lodge anything in your name.

Mostly a harder version of the same one. Gordon's Bay is built up the slope above its own harbour, so nearly every window looks across False Bay and exterior hardware has to be marine-grade; Clarence Drive and the mountainside stands also catch the full south-easter. Strand is flat, so sun and sea wind reach almost every stand with nothing in the way, and beachfront units take direct salt spray. There, a three to five percent sunscreen holds the sea view, zip screens tame sand-laden wind on balconies, and motorised control keeps chains off a balcony door.

Deep-set sash and casement windows in thick walls want a treatment that respects the frame rather than fights it. Timber venetians tilt well in smaller panes and sit naturally against original wooden frames and sills, while a cellular honeycomb blind adds insulation to an old single-glazed window without touching the frame at all. Somerset West's oak-lined centre and Stellenbosch's historic core both get this treatment; the newer estate belt around each town gets the same wide-glass brief as Erinvale.

No. We do not quote from guessed sizes, and nothing on this site is a binding price. Your enquiry through the form or the chat lands with a consultant, and one of our expert consultants will contact you shortly to set a time for the free in-home measure. At the house every opening is measured to the millimetre, the substrate and exposure are assessed, and fabric, openness and control are decided room by room. The written quote that follows carries a line for each window and states the current lead time for each product, so you get a real date rather than a guess. Your details are used only to arrange that call-back and to price the work.