Made-to-measure roller shutters, fitted by us

None. They are two names for the same thing: a curtain of slats that rolls onto a roller inside the box and runs in two side guides. Avvolgibile is the technical term, tapparella is what nearly everyone calls it.

Not to be confused with the serranda, which is the shutter of a shop or a garage, or with the persiana, which is a leaf that opens to the side.

It depends on the size and on what you expect. uPVC costs less, it is light and it is fine on normal-sized windows. Insulated aluminium insulates more, does not distort and carries wide spans, so it is the choice on French doors and large openings.

There is also the question of how they last in the sun: a uPVC slat facing south all day works far harder than an aluminium one. If the window gets full sun, aluminium is the better compromise.

It means each slat is not hollow: it is a profile of folded aluminium filled with polyurethane foam. The foam does two things, it insulates against heat and cold and it stiffens the slat, which therefore does not bend or rattle in the guide.

The practical benefit shows in summer: with the roller shutter down the room stays cooler, because the sun is stopped outside the glass instead of inside the house.

They are two different trades. A roller shutter gives full darkness, is operated from inside without opening the window and can easily be motorised: it is the convenient choice, especially in a bedroom.

A louvred shutter with adjustable slats lets air and filtered light in while keeping the window shaded, and does not steal space inside the wall because it has no box. If your problem is sleeping in the dark, roller shutter. If it is having shade and air together, louvred shutter.

A motor makes sense when there are many roller shutters, when they are heavy or awkward to reach: a large French door on a strap makes itself felt every day. On top of that the strap disappears, and it is almost always the first part to break.

Manual still makes sense on small, little-used windows, and it costs less because there is no motor, no control and no power run. At the site visit you decide window by window; motorising the whole house is not compulsory.

Yes, and it is one of the works with the best ratio of spend to result. The box is an empty container open to the outside to let the curtain through: if it is not insulated, it is the coldest point on the whole wall, and draughts and noise come through there too.

It is insulated from inside with panels applied to the walls of the box, and the slot the strap comes out of is dealt with. The right moment to do it is when the box is already open to change the curtain, so it is not touched twice.

In two cases. If you replace them together with the window, they fall within the window works and follow the same route, ENEA filing included. If you change them on their own, the route is that of solar shading and blackout closures, which has its own technical requirements.

In both cases payment has to be made by dedicated bank transfer and the deduction is recovered in ten yearly instalments. Rates and ceilings change every year, so they have to be checked for the year in which you pay.

The width is measured from the back of one guide to the back of the other, not from outer edge to outer edge, because the curtain has to run inside the guides. The height is taken from the point where the curtain comes out of the box down to the sill, and the length that stays wound on the roller has to be added.

They are two measurements easy to get wrong by a few centimetres, and a mistake costs the lot: a curtain that is too wide will not go in, one that is too short leaves a gap. At the site visit we take them ourselves and the measurement is our responsibility.

You raise the curtain, lock it at the top, open the lid of the box and get to the roller. The old strap is unhooked from the pulley, drawn out of the guide on the wall, and the new one is threaded along the same route, then wound onto the winder keeping the curtain under tension.

If the strap has broken more than once in a short time the problem is not the strap: usually it is the rollers or the supports inside the box that are worn, and going on changing the tape is wasted time.

With warm water and mild soap, with the shutter down and a soft cloth, one side at a time. No solvents, no abrasive products and no pressure washer: pressurised water gets into the box and ends up on the mechanism.

Once a year it is worth going inside the guides too, where dust and sand build up. It is the dirt in the guides, more than the slats, that makes a shutter stiff when it used to run well.