In winter a lit window is on display for half the day
In December, Riga gets less than seven hours between sunrise and sunset. For the other seventeen and a half, a window with the light on works as a shop display: from the street you can see who is home, what is in the room and whether anyone is there at all.
In summer that display is open for an hour before bed. In winter it opens at four in the afternoon. Curtains solve half the problem — silhouettes and light still read from outside. An exterior shutter closes the window physically: all anyone sees is the curtain.
An empty country house from October to April
From October, summer houses and homes outside the city stand unattended for weeks. A ground-floor window is the simplest way in: quiet, quick, no marks on the door.
A shutter does not make a house impregnable, and promising that would be dishonest. What it changes is the arithmetic: “quiet and quick” becomes “slow and loud”. That is exactly what mechanical protection is for — making your house a less convenient target than the one next door.
The other half of the question is signs of life. A house where nothing has moved for a week reads unmistakably from the street. A motor on a schedule solves that literally: the shutters come down in the evening and go up in the morning whether you are there or not.
“Security” is a class, not a word in the description
Burglar resistance is measured to the European standard EN 1627: the construction faces static load, impacts and a manual break-in attempt with a defined tool set within a defined time. That is where the RC classes come from.
- Safety Plus — class RC2. An opportunist with a screwdriver, pliers and a wedge; three minutes of attack in the test. The working choice for a flat or an ordinary house.
- Safety Premium — class RC3. A crowbar, a second screwdriver, an extra wedge; five minutes. The first shutter of its type in Poland to be awarded RC3. This is the class insurers most often ask for on houses with valuable contents.
The class is tied to a specific specification and installation method — swap one part for an “equivalent” and the test report no longer applies. The full breakdown of classes and laboratory tests is in our separate article on Aluprof burglar-resistant systems.
Along the way: heat, quiet and a dark bedroom
A lowered curtain creates a closed layer of air between the shutter and the glass; under EN 13125 that adds thermal resistance to the window. The box matters even more: on the built-on SKB Styroterm system its coefficient is Usb from 0.29 W/(m²K) per IFT Rosenheim testing, and it works around the clock rather than only when the shutter is down.
Two everyday effects usually get noticed first: complete darkness in the bedroom and a noticeably quieter room on the street side. How that works physically, and why “30 % savings” is an advertising figure, is set out in our article on roller shutters and the heating bill.
Why “before winter” is not a marketing line
There is no countdown offer here. There are three technical limits:
- Manufacturing takes 6–15 working days, plus time for the survey and colour approval. By November the queue for surveys is longer than in September.
- Surface-mounted shutters are installed outside, off the façade. Frost, wind and an iced-up wall make that slower and dearer, and installation compounds have a lower temperature limit.
- Built-on and concealed systems go in together with window replacement or façade insulation — work that is generally not started in winter at all.
The arithmetic is simple: an enquiry in September or October means installation before the cold sets in. An enquiry in December most likely means installation in spring.
Where to start
The calculator on the site is free and needs no registration: pick a system, enter the opening size and see the price straight away. A surveyor's visit costs 15 € in Riga and 25 € in Jūrmala; during the survey we check the opening, the window type and the depth of the reveal, and match a system to the actual conditions rather than to averages.
Two-year warranty on mechanisms and installation. Survey, production and fitting are done by our own people, not subcontractors — we have been working with windows since 2001.
Frequently asked questions
Can shutters be installed in winter at all?
Surface-mounted ones, technically yes, and we do it. But the window of opportunity is narrower: short days cut the working shift, an iced façade slows everything down, and installation compounds have a lower temperature limit. So we try to finish outdoor work before the frost settles in.
How long from enquiry to finished shutters?
Manufacturing takes 6–15 working days depending on the system and the colour. Add time for the survey and approval — in autumn that is usually a few days more.
Does a shutter replace an alarm?
No, they are different layers. A shutter is mechanical: it costs the intruder time and makes noise. An alarm notifies. They work as a pair and neither cancels the other.
What if the windows are non-standard — arched, trapezoidal, unusually wide?
We match the system to the actual dimensions during the survey: wide openings have extruded aluminium curtains and reinforced rollers. What will actually fit is only visible on site — a photograph does not settle it.