Making a home energy efficient is not only about maximising thermal insulation in winter, but maintaining a stable, comfortable climate inside the home all year round. Ian Short, Managing Director of Morley Glass, explains how integral blind units help to provide this.

When we think about the contribution that the latest windows and doors can make to creating more sustainable, energy efficient homes, we tend to concentrate on improving thermal insulation during the colder months. This is understandable given that the UK historically has far more cold months than warm periods, unlike many of our European neighbours.

As our climate changes, however, the UK is experiencing more extremely hot weather, and that means we also need to consider how our glazing can help us manage the risk of overheating too. Installing an air conditioning system is one option. However, this is not only a financially costly solution, but one that will put further demand on the UK’ s energy supplies – not ideal for

the UK to meet its carbon reduction goals.

An alternative is to prevent excessive heat build-up in the first place by ensuring the windows and doors feature blinds to provide effective shading, and solar control glass to reduce the amount of solar gain from sunlight.

Why integral blinds can offer the ultimate in solar control

Shading a room through the use of blinds and curtains is the obvious way to reduce strong sunlight impacting on a home’ s internal temperature on sunny days. Choosing integral blinds is not only one of the most aesthetically appealing ways to incorporate shading into any type of window or door, but because all of the control systems available within the Uni-Blinds ® range are designed for easy operation, they can be brought into action quickly whenever the sun becomes too strong.

This is particularly so for the ScreenLine ® motorised integral blind systems – the MB System, which features a brushless motor, and the battery-operated W Smart

System. These allow for raising, lowering and tilting of the blind slats from a remote control handset or via a smartphone app, and the MB System can even be incorporated into all the leading smart home systems, including Loxone, to open and close automatically according to the room’ s temperature.

The passive dimension to an integral blind unit designed to reduce overheating comes with the use of solar control glass such as Saint-Gobain COOL-LITE SKN 176 II, which can be specified at the quotation stage to give the homeowner a unit that works on every level. This type of solar control glass still allows for high levels of light transmittance of up to 75 %, whilst offering a low solar gain value( g-value) of just 0.37.

Maintaining high thermal insulation levels in cooler periods too

The great thing about Uni- Blinds ® integral blinds which feature a solar control glass within the IGU is that they offer the best of both worlds from an energy efficiency perspective. Whilst the ability of integral blind units to control excessive solar gain is crucially important to creating, so too is their capacity to insulate homes in colder times of the year.

In fact, a Uni-Blinds ® integral blind unit featuring COOL-LITE SKN 176 II glass can have a

centre-pane U-value as low as 1.0 W / m2K( with a 16mm, 90 % argon cavity). But COOL-LITE SKN is not the only‘ climate control’ glass available for Uni- Blinds ®. In properties where the risk of overheating is less severe, but there is a desire to maximise thermal insulation in winter, Planitherm One can be an effective solution too.

The quality of the components used to manufacture Uni-Blinds ®, all of which feature world-class ScreenLine ® systems from Pellini S. p. A., and the quality control procedures applied throughout the Morley Glass factory, help to ensure all our IGUs perform as specified throughout their lifetime. This includes dual sealing every IGU to optimise gas retention and the use of a warm edge spacer bar which is custom-designed for integral blinds to minimise heat conduction.

Find out more about the energy efficiency benefits of Uni-Blinds ® at www. morleyglass. co. uk.