McKellar sits in the northern part of Belconnen where the ground is fairly open and the cold does not lift quickly in the morning. Shutters in that kind of position spend much of the winter frozen or close to it at dawn, and the freeze and thaw cycle is the biggest single cause of the faults we are called out to in the suburb.
We cover McKellar in the 2617 postcode, from the streets bordering Evatt and Giralang across to the Florey and Lawson edges. Bruce and the Belconnen town centre are close by and sit on the same run.
McKellar was built out in the 1970s, mostly single-storey brick homes on regular blocks. Shutters here are retrofits, and after four decades the fixings and the moving parts are generally both due for attention at once.
The rubber seal along the bottom rail is the part that fails first in McKellar, and it is also one of the cheapest components on the shutter. Water works into the seal, freezes overnight and forces the rubber apart, and after a few winters it no longer makes proper contact with the sill. That lets cold air straight in, and it lets the curtain sit slightly out of position, which then starts wearing the guides. Replacing a seal is a small job and it is worth doing before it takes something else with it.
