Local Shutter InstallersQuestions · Cost
Do you need an electrician?
Updated
For a solar shutter that stays outside the existing wiring, often no. For a wired motor on a new circuit, yes: use a competent electrician and expect the usual building-regulations route for notifiable work.
A fitted illustration
The shutter fitter and the electrician should agree the route before the plaster is chased.
Fitted illustration for Do you need an electrician? in Edinburgh: £3,878 at September 2026 prices, for this 4.2 by 1.2 m opening with a belt. The figure allows a front-mounted aluminium curtain and ordinary fixing. It does not include scaffold, a rebuilt soffit, planning drawings, or a new window. A second opening on the same visit usually costs less than the first, because the van is already there. Compare two quotes only when the slat, the box and the drive match.
- belt on a 4.2 by 1.2 m opening
- Colour as a RAL or foil reference, not a dusk photo
- Scaffold, electrics and making good listed or excluded
- Lanterns and side lights named or left out
Heat, so the price has a job
The worked opening for Do you need an electrician? is 4.2 m wide by 1.2 m high, 5.04 square metres of glass. This figure puts 620 watts per square metre on the pane and uses a g-value of 0.63, about 1969 watts into the room if the curtain is up. An opaque external shutter, taken as stopping 80 percent of that gain while it is fully down, leaves about 394 watts and keeps about 1575 watts out. That is a noon figure for comparison. An internal blind does not get the same reduction. For Do you need an electrician?, use the noon figure to compare two openings on the same house, then let a measured survey replace the figure.
Winter on the same opening
Winter figure for Do you need an electrician?: glass at 1.2 W/m2K, 5.04 square metres, a 12 degree inside-outside gap and eight night hours. The bare pane is about 0.58 kWh a night on that crude sum. A closed shutter cutting about 18 percent of the flow leaves 0.48 kWh and saves about 0.10 kWh a night, only while it is down. Open it when you want winter sun.
When the cheaper quote is incomplete
Stop Do you need an electrician? if the frame cannot take a guide and the wall beside it is crumbling. A photograph is not a manufacturing size.
How to use the figure
The 4.2 by 1.2 metre opening inside Do you need an electrician? is there so a quote has something to disagree with. If the tape gives a different size, the tape wins.
The example drive is a belt, and the illustration is £3,878. A belt, a wired motor and a solar motor can share a curtain and still be different jobs. Compare those lines, not a single bold total.
What the survey still has to write down
For Do you need an electrician?, ask where the box lands, what colour reference will be ordered, and how the curtain opens when the motor is dead. Those three answers move the job more than a rounded price.
Leave the lantern, the side light and the next elevation off the order unless they are drawn. Do you need an electrician? covers one kind of opening. The house may have three.
When I would not order yet
Do you need an electrician? should wait if the opening is an escape door with no way to raise a dead motor, or if the front is the elevation a conservation area was drawn to protect.
A photograph is not a manufacturing size. Two quotes for Do you need an electrician? only compare when the slat, the box and the drive are the same kind of thing.
Questions worth asking the fitter
Is the price on this page a quote?
No. £3,878 illustrates Do you need an electrician? for a 4.2 by 1.2 metre opening with a belt, at September 2026 rates. Your survey replaces it.
Does the shutter cover every pane?
It covers the opening it is built for. Here that example is 5.04 square metres. A roof lantern, a side light or the next elevation is another line.
What if planning is unclear?
Do not pay the factory for Do you need an electrician? until a listed building, a conservation front, a flat or a shopfront has a written answer. Ordinary rear walls on houses are sometimes simpler.
What should two quotes share?
The same openings, the same slat type, and the same drive. Do you need an electrician? uses a belt in the example so you can see how much the motor choice moves £3,878.