Hi I’m Jason from the brand Blockout Blinds and today I’m here to show you how to put an automatic awning up and down correctly the first time and every time.
So you’re probably thinking why you need a video to put an awning up and down — it’s such a simple thing. Well, putting an awning up and down correctly can actually be difficult if you’re not doing it the correct way and in fact you can even end up breaking your window or doing something terrible like that.
So we’ve put together this video to make sure that you can operate your awning correctly and you don’t have any troubles.
So of course, what we need to get started; we’re going to need an awning, and we’re also going to need the stick that comes with the awning to pull the awning up and down.So we have an awning…now I’ve made things a little bit more difficult today. First of all, I’ve decided to use a very old awning — this awning is about 30 years old and a bit rusty. I’ve also chosen an awning which has a big prickly bush underneath it to make it even more difficult.
So I’m picking the worse case scenario here to operate an awning, but hopefully for you, you don’t have bushes…and you’re operating a new awning not an old awning.So the first thing is pulling the awning down.
And the first thing to note — if your awning has not been down for a while, when you’re gonna pull it down, it may be a bit stiff it may be not pulled down correctly. So you might have to use a little bit of force but of course you need to judge the right amount of force.
If you’re pulling unnecessarily too hard — well then it may not be in the right position or something you may be actually breaking it.
Also be aware you know there can be debris and stuff inside the blind — we’ve had cases where people would pull down their awnings they’ve had wasps in there, spiders, big amount of dirt that had built up. So just be careful and you should be okay.
So…you have your awning stick and you have a hook on the end.
Now, the first thing that people try to do that is not correct is ….they go to put the pull down … with the pole straight and of course that’s harder to get the hook on.
So you really need to put it in a bit of an angle so you can get the hook onto the ring that’s on the bottom of the awning.
So let’s give a go, I’ll just get through this bush…you might want to move the flap a little bit to see where the hook is — there it is…get on a bit of an angle, now, I’m in that hook…just wobble it a bit, have a look make sure you’re in the hole securely. If not you might gonna pull it and it’ll fly off and hurt yourself.
Now, you don’t want to pull straight directly down initially, we’ve got to get the arms to come out.
So Ideally, you want to pull on as much angle outwards as you can.
So, as you’ll see, the awning comes around and this is generally the stiffest bit because the arms which are on the guides here they have to come around the bend. So it’s a little bit sticky sometimes. I’ll give it a go…
There you go! They’re clicked out, and they’re now in the out position. Now to pull the blind down, we can pull in the downward direction that’s okay, co’z we’ve already pulled the arms out. So I’ll keep pulling it down, now I put the hook on from left to right. So as I come down my stick is going to get closer to the ground to the bottom of the stick. So I need to move the stick to my right so I can pull the hook off easily. If I put it to the other direction, I’m not able going to get the hook off. Sounds simple but it happens a lot. So I’ll put the hook back on…and I’ll keep pulling down.
Now generally with our awning you’ll pull the awning down as far as you can and if it does get into a position where you can actually reach the blind, it’s easier to take the hook off and then use your hand …to pull the blind all the way down.
It’s not that often you have an awning that you reach from the ground right to the top but it does happen.
And one thing you just need to make sure of is that you always pull the awning from the middle.
If you happen to be able to reach it from the ground and just grab it straight from the top, don’t pull it from the left or the right — make sure you pull the middle because if you pull it from one side, you’ll pull it down crooked it won’t slide down correctly and it makes the fabric become uneven and especially don’t put it up by holding left to right because it then rolls up uneven and that’s the last thing we want.
So there you go we have the awning in the down position…just remember primarily these are designed to be pulled all the way down and not in the mid points.
This will stay half way or three quarters down, but ideally you want it all the way down.
Okay so now we need to put the blind up and it’s a little bit more difficult to put the blind up than down because you’re holding against the force of the arms which the springs pulling them up. So let’s see what do we need to do…
Well, once again, you gonna be using your hook. But first of all, you want to get the awning as high as you can up by using your hands it makes life much more easier…the higher it is the easier it is to get the hook on.Then what we’re going to be doing is we’re going to be using the hook not to actually technically push the blind up. We’re using the hook to hold the blind flat against the wall.
You’ll see what I mean when we have a go now…So first of all, I’m going to grab the blind with my hand, and I’m going to fold it down.
So our aim now is to keep it flat against the wall.
Now what you don’t want to do is just let go here…I will do it just to show what it does…but this is not what you’re meant to do.
There you go…it nearly went all the way up and we have had clients doing that regularly which they’re not meant to.
Please do not do that, they can spring up, they can hurt someone, it flies up quickly, it’s just not the way to do it.
So let me just bring the blind back down again…
So the correct way to do it is to manually hold the blind, fold it flat against the wall, and hold the blind up as high as you can off the ground — that’s about as high as I can get…
Have a look where the hook hole is…and I’ve got trees here which is a bit hard…so I’m gonna hook it on…now, make sure the hook’s on because you don’t want to slip and fall against the window. So I’m holding it, now you need to make sure you’re using 2 hands.
So what I’m doing now is I’m applying force in that direction to hold it flat. Now if I was to slip off and I’m pushing that way, I could push this pole and hook through my glass and break my window. So that’s why you need to make sure the hook’s on securely.
So with 2 hands, I’m going to just keep pushing into the wall and raise it up. Now the arms will eventually get to the top and then they’ll swing around.
And the blind is back up. And of course, I’ll take my hook off and my pole and I’ll put this away in safe keeping.
And we now our blind in the fully up position. So I hope you found that interesting. If you follow those simple steps you should have no problems. But you need to remember putting an awning up it can be a little bit fiddly it might not be as straight forward as what you initially thought.
So I hope that tip has been helpful, and until next time.
