Nature’s Choice
Green Building Solutions by Blind Solutions
How can we make a difference?
Blind Solutions customers find themselves ever more involved with ‘green building’ practices. Working towards greater sustainability saves energy and costs. Our products contribute to sustainable buildings by effectively managing natural daylight.
When it comes to sustainable building, myths and misunderstandings abound.
Blind Solutions product portfolio is filled with innovative products that can be used to greatly improve the sustainability of the built environment. Innovation will make our own methods more sustainable,and helps us design sun control solutions with which our clients can work with in our common objective for more sustainability by enhancing interior comfort by increasing occupant productivity and reducing energy consumption.
Product selection plays a key role in the design of high-performance sustainable buildings. By managing natural daylight they enhance interior comfort increase occupant productivity and reduce energy consumption.
Indoor enviromental quality has essentially four dimensions:
- Thermal comfort;
- Visual comfort;
- Acoustic comfort;
- Indoor air quality.
Sustainable buildings are often thought to be 30 to 40 percent more expensive than ‘normal’ buildings. The actual figure is between 0 and 15 percent.
Return on the extra investment can be much more than just reduced energy expenses during the exploitation phase.
If sustainable concepts are designed with an open eye for comfort and occupant productivity, enormous benefits can be achieved.
The sustainable dimension of exterior sun control
The primary purpose of exterior sun control is to prevent excessive solar heat gain and thus reduce the need for artificial or mechanised cooling in summer. Obviously, this is a sustainable strategy that reduces the primary energy requirement of the building. Moreover,it will also reduce -if not eliminate- the required capacity of cooling equipment,and thus reduce initial investment cost.
In colder climates, sun control will help heating in winter by letting in free, renewable, solar energy. A careful matching of glazing and operable exterior sun control will improve thermal comfort and reduce greenhouse gas emissions throughout the building’s lifetime.
The sustainable dimension of interior window coverings
The primary purpose of interior window coverings is to provide visual comfort: reduce glare and diffuse incoming sunlight to comfortable intensity levels. This way, free,renewable daylight can be exploited to the maximum. There is less need for artificial lighting, less heat emanating from it, so less need for cooling. Interior window coverings are an essential component in high-performance daylight management! Interior window coverings may also have a positive effect on energy use through their insulating properties. This requires automated intelligent response to dynamic inputs from sensors and integration with the system that control lighting and indoor climate.
Only then, the full sustainable potential of the sun control can be captured. Building automation is a clearly distinguishable trend that has become part of legislation during the last few years.
Protocols- Control Systems
Z-Wave is emerging as open standard for wireless control. The Z-Wave alliance is an open consortium of over 160 manufactures who create products an services based on Z -Wave.
We will actively seek opportunities to integrate our products into a Z-Wave controlled environment. Blind Solutions primary brand Sunlux is embarking on development of our own in house locally manufactured control systems featuring RS485 protocols. This is an exciting move forward and will be the first of its kind in the Blind Industry in South Africa.
LOW E Range of products by Sunlux
Low e and refelective fabrics and venetian blind slatting is the future of green and sustainable blinds and Blind Solutions are not only the pioneers in this field in South Africa, but we are the leaders in a very short time due to our abilities to adapt to the fast changing green environment.
Topar
Topar is one of the most effective strategies to reduce solar heat gain is to reflect the unwanted radiation to the oustside and is exclusive to our Luxaflex range.
Thermoslat
The special Sunlux Thermoslat strip is based on a slat, that has a special coating on the concave side of the strip and highly effective in reflecting heat. In summer,this is very effective in directing solar energy to the outside, lowering the inside temperature and the need for additional cooling.
Compared to normal painted slat,Thermoslat coating reduces the emission of heat radiation by a factor of 3. This in turn increases thermal resistance. A fully closed Thermoslat coated venetian can therefore be fairly effective in keeping heat indoors in winter.
Sunlux Range of Sun Screen fabrics
Our internal screen fabrics regulate the amount of sunlight and eliminate glare and blinding. Our external screen solutions help keep the temperature under control and reduce or eliminate the need for air conditioning. These effects benefit both comfort levels and the energy bill. When integrated in an architect’s design, our solutions are very discrete, leaving the building to fully express its identity in the “GREEN WAY”
