Folding-arm awnings — shade with nothing standing in the way

Why the wind sensor is not an upsell

Between November and March the Highveld builds a storm most afternoons, and it arrives faster than anyone gets home. An awning left out in a gust is how arms bend and fabric tears. A wind sensor reads movement at the front bar and retracts the awning automatically, whether or not anybody is there. On an estate patio that faces open fairway with nothing upwind to break the gust, we treat it as part of the product rather than an option.

Cassette, semi-cassette, open

A full cassette closes around the fabric and the arms when retracted — the fabric stays clean and dry, which on a Johannesburg dust season is worth the difference on its own. A semi-cassette covers the roll and the top of the arms. An open awning leaves the roll exposed and is only sensible under a deep overhang. For anything exposed to the course we specify full cassette.

Fabric, pitch and projection

• Solution-dyed acrylic holds its colour under Highveld UV far better than a printed cloth.
• The pitch is set on site: steeper sheds water and blocks a lower sun; flatter reaches further out over the table.
• Projection is limited by the wall you have and the arms you choose — we measure the fixing substrate first, because a plastered-brick pier and a face-brick column want different anchors.
• Motorised as standard on anything wide; a manual crank is fine on a small unit.
• Fabric must be dry before it rolls away. If it retracts wet, run it out again on the next dry morning.

An awning alone rarely finishes the job

An awning stops sun coming down. It does very little about sun coming in sideways, which on a west-facing Dainfern patio is precisely the five-o'clock problem. That is what a zip screen is for: a mesh dropped down the open side, held in channels so wind cannot flap it. Most patios we quote end up with both, and the two are usually run off the same remote.

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