Shade Sails

Shade Sails (also known as Sail Shades) and awnings are a great solution for providing protection from sun, rain and wind in outdoor areas. There are many commercial properties such as cafes, pubs, clubs, schools, day care centres, hospitals and nursing homes utilizing their outdoor areas with overhead coverings and private companies providing outdoor space for their staff to use for coffee and lunch breaks. They are now also more and more homes and private residences with shade sails and awnings.Shading outside your home can promote more outdoor living for all the family. A shade over the children’s play area or sandpit will give the kids more hours in the fresh air away from the TV & computer and give them a spot for creative play such as play dough and painting. Shade over the pool or spa, the barbecue or entertaining area helps to create an outdoor room. Teenagers will love hanging out with their friends in their own space. A sail may even provide a rest area outdoors for your pets away from the house.

Shade sails are also a very popular way to create a car port to help protect your car and could also give you not only overhead protection between the car and the home but also help to keep your paths, paving or concrete cooler under foot.

Shade Sail is made of a porous cloth therefore rain and wind can penetrate the fabric but the sail is best installed at an angle to promote rain run off. Many companies will offer more than twenty fabric colours to choose from and depending on the colour they will provide upwards of 75% UVR protection with the darker colours providing the most sun protection. Opt for a fabric that extra strong webbing around the perimeter.

Shade Sails are a semi or non permanent structure that can be attached between two buildings, attached at one end to a building and posts at the other end or only supported by posts. The posts are concreted into the ground to ensure they will not move with wind or in a storm. The sails can be unclipped and stored away during the winter months if required and if you are in a cyclone prone area it is recommending that you remove the sails before the storm hits. A fully waterproof shade sail or structure is made of a heavier PVC fabric and therefore requires a more sturdy construction and installation hence more expensive.Most companies that manufacture and install shade sails also make shade umbrellas and retractable awnings.

Umbrellas are popular over pools as well as your outdoor dining table and they can be installed with lighting or heating as you may have seen in outdoor cafes. Retractable awnings are attached to a building and can be moved in and out by either a crank handle or remote control. They usually fold back neatly into a cassette when not in use. An ideal solution when you only need shade at certain times of the day or year and the remote control option is very convenient and can be operated from inside.

Need some shade over your outdoor area find a shade sail specialist near you on the Homeimprovement2day directory.

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