Monthly Archives: August 2016

Multi-Functional Outdoor Shelters

Our design team enjoy creating attractive and useful outdoor shelters to suit our clients’ varying needs.  It may be that a user wants to lock away their nursery play toys at night, or they require something a little more sophisticated than the norm for bus shelters on their business park.  Perhaps they need a bicycle or smoking shelter, or somewhere to protect spectators at the side of a sports field.  Our covers have also been installed as outdoor eating enclosures at schools – costing far less than a traditionally built dining room and being much quicker to erect and, therefore, utilise.

Using aluminium for the framework is our material of choice as it is such a versatile metal.  It can be formed into many shapes, it is relatively light in weight, making it easier and safer to handle and install, it won’t rust in use and once powder coated it retains its good looks.  It is also one of the greenest products around – approximately 80% of the aluminium in use today has been recycled at least once, and it can be recycled again and again without losing its many properties.

We generally glaze our shelters with polycarbonate, either solid or multiwall, depending upon whether light and/or visibility are required.  Incredibly tough and virtually unbreakable, polycarbonate is available in a range of tints and colours.  Sometimes an aluminium cladding product may also be incorporated in the design to help accentuate a shape or to replace glazing in a vertical application where visibility is not required.  All of these products lend themselves to attractive curved shapes, which have an element of self-cleaning in rain.

One of our shelters has just been installed round the corner from us on Birchwood Park, where we have already designed and installed two custom-made bus shelters and an open sided motor-bike cover.  The brief this time was for a smoking shelter to be used by the occupants of several buildings.  Katie Skinsley, Building Manager, says “During the quotation and installation process I found the team at Twinfix to be extremely helpful, keeping me up to date with progress and checking on quality etc.  I am really pleased with how well the smoking shelter fits in to the surrounding area and have since recommended Twinfix to colleagues for their own external areas.”

For those who are looking for an elegant, useful and functional outside glazed cover the Twinfix design team await the challenge!