Very few people call us about a shutter the day it starts going wrong. In Hughes the usual story is that it got a bit noisier last winter, then a bit slower, and then one morning it did not move at all. Almost every failure we attend gave months of warning first, and most of them would have been a smaller job earlier. The signs are easy to miss because they arrive slowly.
We cover Hughes in the 2605 postcode along with Garran, Curtin, Deakin, Red Hill and Phillip. Central Woden is a short run and we are through it often.
Hughes was developed in the 1960s, mostly solid brick single storey homes on large blocks with established gardens. The window openings are generous and the shutters fitted to them carry real weight. A number of homes here have shutters across the whole street frontage, so there is a lot of hardware ageing at once.
A shutter that runs is not necessarily a shutter that is fine. Clearing and lubricating rails, checking spring tension and replacing worn brushes are all small pieces of work that keep a motor inside its comfortable range. On the older Hughes installations that is often the difference between a unit lasting another five years and one failing next July. Autumn is the sensible time to do it.
