Neil Gordon

Recently installed interior solar shades in Intensive Care Unit. Hospital ICU’s are challenging environments. These high pressure units are full time operations with lots of uncertainty and very sick patients. Working as an outside vendor in any ICU requires a full appreciation of flexibility, cleanliness and an absolute understanding of patient safety. This was the playing field when InSync Solar was approached by the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center to install motorized shades on the entire 11^th floor ICU.During the measurement process our team had to “suit up” in full surgical gear to enter each occupied room. This was repeated 20 times going through a full disinfection protocol for each room. As the project progressed we were asked to integrate the shades with a Pillow Speaker System that was being upgraded to include shade control for patient comfort.

 
We recently completed an interior shade installation at one of the JFK terminal airport tower centers. InSync Solar was brought in to replace the existing interior shades with our custom engineered interior mylar shades. 

One of the biggest challenges in designing solar shades is for where glass butts glass in corner conditions. The design of two roller shades meeting in a corner leaves large gaps of open glass. This is not a good outcome when the purpose of solar shading is to reduce solar heat gain and glare and therefore by leaving a large opening uncovered makes no sense.

The InSync Solar Corner Zipper Shade System is a solar shade for corner windows. Instead of a large gap created when the two shades butt one another, the fabrics are actually “zipped” together, closing the gap completely. Both shade panels move simultaneously and the Hembar disappears in the headbox when fully rolled up.

 
“I only want to see exterior solar shades”. This was the most frequent comment I heard from visitors to our booth at the 2016 AIA Convention in Philadelphia. When I pointed out that we also offered interior shades, the attendees explained their focus was only in our display of five exterior shading solutions. 

As a thirty-year veteran in the window covering industry I have seen many exciting products come and go. Nothing has ever compared to the Model Systems Italia’s TF51. TF51 stands for tension force and this is the magic behind the system. Tension force means that the gravity defying hem bar provides the constant tension to the fabric and as you will see below works great as a bottom up shade system. 

The previous way of achieving tension on the fabric was with two rollers: one roller with the motor and the other roller with a spring to provide the tension. This system falls short of the TF51 because it requires an extra bulky roller, less tension, which means more sagging and functions only on smaller dimensions.

We are excited to annouce the newest feature for interior solar shade fabrics called “Seal-n-Split”. This new patented process creates a perfect edge for interior roller shade fabrics, eliminating the typical “frayed” edges (as seen in the below picture).

It’s a rare occurrence to not to be able to come up with a solution for a window. Over the past thirty years in the window covering business, I have been stumped only a few times. One of the most difficult shaped windows for a functioning treatment is a trapezoid, however with our exterior aluminum louvers any shape is possible – great for both interior and exterior applications.

The InSync Solar Rack Arm aluminum louver system has rotating louvers that can be customized to follow the angle or shape of any window. The louvers are fixed onto a “rack-arm” system. This does not allow the lovers to stack like a typical blind but can open and close to control solar energy, light and glare control for interior or exterior applications as you can see in the below pictures.

Below is a interesting article from Fox news and posted on houzz on Pergola exterior shading systems that we wanted to share – below is a link to the article and see below http://www.foxnews.com/leisure/2016/03/17/which-pergola-is-right-for/

We are excited to announce the newest quiet motorized shade motor from Somfy, the Sonesse ULTRA 50 DC RTS. The Sonesse® ULTRA 50 DC RTS is now available, offering an ultra-quiet and ultra-powerful shading solution with the convenience of low-voltage power. This new motor offers ultra-quiet operation, 4Nm of lifting capacity, and streamlines programming and installation with advanced options to save time. These features include:

• Ability to set/adjust limits directly on the motor head or via transmitter
• LED indicators for immediate feedback
• 5-minute sleep mode directly from the motor head eliminates the need to unplug motors for programming, grouping or adjusting limits.

What does it mean to call a design sustainable? According to the AIA website, the definition of sustainable design is as follows:

“Sustainable design is a collaborative process that involves
thinking ecologically—studying systems, relationships,
and interactions—in order to design in ways that
removes rather than contribute stress from systems.”
Source: AIA.ORG

It is the last phrase of the definition that this article will focus on, which states that sustainable design removes stress from systems. There are many designs and systems in a building where stress can be removed through sustainable solutions. The sustainable exterior shade removes stress on systems through energy reduction, glare reduction, and light control. In addition, exterior solar shades can contribute to popular green building movements such as LEED, WELL Building Standard and Passive House.

Energy Reduction
Exterior solar shades are critical elements in reducing the amount of solar energy entering a space and thereby reducing the need for cooling. This can have a significant effect especially when the shades are mounted on the exterior. Exterior solar shades provide tremendous reductions over interior shades for reducing solar heat gain. As the graphic below shows, an exterior shade can reduce the amount of solar radiation entering a space by over 85%.