Yarralumla's streets are heavily treed and its blocks are generous, which is pleasant to live with and hard on a roller shutter. Mature plantings drop a steady load of leaf, seed and bark into anything with an opening in it, and a shutter headbox is exactly that. Add the lake sitting on the suburb's doorstep and the damp that comes off it on winter mornings, and the hardware works in a more demanding setting than the street suggests.
We cover all of Yarralumla in the 2600 postcode, from the lake foreshore through the older residential streets and out to the Deakin and Curtin boundaries. Forrest, Red Hill and the rest of the inner south are on the same run.
Much of the housing dates from the 1920s through the 1950s, with a great deal of later renovation and extension, so shutters here are retrofits sitting on old masonry and on newer additions alike.
Of everything on this list, headbox debris is the easiest to prevent and the most often ignored, because you cannot see it. The box is closed, the shutter still works, and nothing looks wrong until the day it will not roll up. Having the box opened and cleared every couple of years is a short job on its own, and it is a great deal cheaper than freeing a curtain that has been forced against a compacted mass of leaf litter. If your house sits under established trees, put it on the list with the gutters.
