Hallmark external blinds?

[Alan Ambrose]

For budgeting and decision making purposes, does anyone have a rough idea of the cost of these? Any other competitors you considered? How did you provide for inevitable maintenance? Dropping them down from their slot or somehow extracting them from the front? Did you bury the side channels in the window surround or leave them proud?

[Bramco]

@Alan Ambrose

 

We had ours installed over 3 years ago, so probably not worth comparing costs.  We did look around for other suppliers but they either didn't do what we were looking for or were much more expensive.

 

We didn't plan for maintenance....    But they've been in for a while now with no problems. I say no problems....   someone....  left one of the chairs on the patio under one of them and it wouldn't straighten by itself, so we got Hallmark out to fix it. They did explain how to rejig the tapes that do the up and downing by pushing buttons on the motors - although of course we've no idea now how to do that!!  You can see the motors when the blinds are down by looking up into the housing.

 

We didn't use cassettes but I did find some interesting lintels with cassettes built into them. Could probably still find these if you are interested.  Ours are built into a slot above behind the timberwork for the cladding. You can see this from the photos on our architects web page -> https://lhc.net/projects/ashcroft-creating-a-low-energy-family-home/

 

If you zoom in to the photo with the chairs outside, you can see that the side channels were attached to stands that were screwed into the frame of the sliding doors. So they are proud of the sides of the opening.

 

We are very pleased with them - they're great in the summer for reducing solar gain and from autumn to spring good at letting the solar gain in.

 

Hallmark are only a small outfit but apart from a few niggles we were pleased with them.

 

PS We used wired switches but in hindsight it might have been better to have a wireless system.

[Alan Ambrose]

Thanks for that. Reporting back after talking to Hallmark re their external ‘Trojan’ Venetians I’m learning that:

 

+ the blinds install from below into a 120mm slot so that would also be how you would replace them. Depth of slot is a function of how long the blinds are as the 80mm slats stack inside.

+ the vertical guide rails could be inset but often are mounted directly to whatever holds the window frame - in our case a ‘window box’ as we’re building a timber frame.

+ costs are about £0.7K for a 1x1m window to £1K for a 2m W x 2.3m H.

+ they sit on a 4-core cable. You can route that to their switch or back to your own fancy control system.

[Bramco]

7 hours ago, Alan Ambrose said:

they sit on a 4-core cable. You can route that to their switch or back to your own fancy control system.

 

Don't let your electrician slap in any old wire. I think ours made some assumption about the motors needing heavy duty cable, either that or he had an old reel in the back of the van to use up. Hallmark can give you the spec but from memory it's 1.5mm from memory.  Fat cables at the back of the Somfy switches are a pain - there's not much room round the back of the switch in the box.

 

Also, if you intend to use the Somfy switches, I have a Somfy weather station going spare - it was specced before we found a  much smaller, neater anemometer.  Although, even this could come out, as we've disabled the automatic lifting of the blinds in high winds.  It only happened once in the middle of the night which could have startled anyone on the lane.  We've been through much worse wind conditions since then and the blinds have been fine.

[Nickfromwales]

1 hour ago, Bramco said:

 

Don't let your electrician slap in any old wire. I think ours made some assumption about the motors needing heavy duty cable, either that or he had an old reel in the back of the van to use up. Hallmark can give you the spec but from memory it's 1.5mm from memory.  Fat cables at the back of the Somfy switches are a pain - there's not much room round the back of the switch in the box.

 

Also, if you intend to use the Somfy switches, I have a Somfy weather station going spare - it was specced before we found a  much smaller, neater anemometer.  Although, even this could come out, as we've disabled the automatic lifting of the blinds in high winds.  It only happened once in the middle of the night which could have startled anyone on the lane.  We've been through much worse wind conditions since then and the blinds have been fine.

I fixed the little windmill on to a patio slab, on a previous clients job, and set it down onto a section of flat roof where it was out of sight.

 

Wont you lose the warranty without it installed? Even if it’s disconnected. 
 

Agree, there’s not much room with the Somfy switches, and making off the 0.75mm2 5-core was a git. 
 

1.5mm2 is way overkill, as that’ll take 18amps. 3a or 5a fuse on these from memory, so 0.75mm2 is ample. 

[Bramco]

18 minutes ago, Nickfromwales said:

Wont you lose the warranty without it installed? Even if it’s disconnected.

Don't think it's a warranty issue tbh - but they really aren't needed - unless @Alan Ambrose would love to buy our surplus one from us  😉   Alan ?

 

And probably my memory is failing me on the cable size - but glad to hear someone else finds the room round the back of the switches a pain....

[Nickfromwales]

1 minute ago, Bramco said:

Don't think it's a warranty issue tbh - but they really aren't needed - unless @Alan Ambrose would love to buy our surplus one from us  😉   Alan ?

 

And probably my memory is failing me on the cable size - but glad to hear someone else finds the room round the back of the switches a pain....

Also didn’t help that the French chap who supported, pissed of back to the land of the baguette with the female connectors……after showing me and saying to keep them safe…..after supposedly leaving them for me to do the final hookup. lol.