Bodgomatic curtain control!

[Nigel Orr <Nigel.Orr@xxxxxxx>]

At 08:59 20/04/00 +0100, you wrote:
>Now trhats what I need!!! The wife made the curtains and I put up the
pole.
>I don't think she would be happy if I scrapped her good work just so
that I
>could play about with opening the curtains remotely !!
>Please post the details!

OK, as there has been a bit of interest, I'll try it in ASCII, and if it
doesn't work, I'll take some photos and put them on a web page!

Feel free to use the concept (as I said, it's not exactly complicated!), if
you want to quote this post verbatim (?!?!?!), put my email address on it
as ha@xxxxxxx and let me know.  It will probably go on
my own pages eventually with pictures, and I can then give you a link to a
clearer version of it.  Copyright Nigel Orr 2000.

As I said, it's actually very straightforward to do... and anyone could
probably work it out by sitting down and scribbling diagrams (I did!), but
here goes:

You need one piece of cord, any sort of cord that meets your approval, and
more importantly your resident interior designer's aesthetic standards.
B&Q seem to have a good range of cords- we got a length that was
similar to
the curtain colour...

Measure the distance between the curtain pole supports (the bits that come
out of the wall and have large holes in them for the pole to slide though).
I'll call that 'A'

Measure the vertical distance from the top of the pole supports to where
you want the bottom of the loop to hang.  If you are going to have them
automatic only, this can be very short so you can hide the opener behind
the top of the curtains.  I'll call that 'B'.

String length needs to be 2x(A+B) plus about 20-30cm for knots.

Connect it to the curtains as shown below (ulp!)

/-----------------------LX---------------------------------\
__________________________                              \
/O                         \                           O
RX--------------------------/
k



\k/

All the odd lines are cord,
'O's are the pole supports (the 2 cords on the left just sit on the pole
support together)
'X's are where you tie the cord to the rings that slide on the pole.
('LX' is where you tie it to the left curtain, 'RX' is to the right
curtain.  It's best to tie on at the 2nd ring from the centre, so that when
you pull the cord the curtains meet properly in the middle, rather than the
rings meeting and the curtains having a slight gap.  It also hides the ends
of the cord better.  The two ends of the string can be tied together neatly
at either LX or RX.  At the other 'X' you need to tie the cord on 'en
route', or make a loop in the cord afterwards and fix it to the ring
somehow.  You'll see what I mean when you try it...)

'k' are points where you can tie small knots, if the curtains are going to
be manually controlled only.  Open the curtains fully, tie a knot at the
bottom of the loop, close them fully, tie a knot at the (new) bottom of the
loop.  Now, to either open or close the curtains, just find the highest of
the two knots and pull on it- useful to avoid pulling the whole curtain
pole of the wall if you're not quite awake when trying to open them... this
might only be a problem for me though :-)

Basically, it uses the pole supports as pulleys, which will probably wear
them out eventually, so you could put some tape, or extra varnish on top of
them if that concerns you.  I've had mine like this for about 6 months on a
standard cheap wooden pole so far, and another one on plastic poles for
about 3 years.

As I implied with my question about the curtain motor, you need to make
sure the pole is firmly fixed to the wall- opening curtains normally is a
side-to-side force, so as long as the fixings support the weight of the
curtains and pole, all will be well.  But now you will be pulling down on
the poles, so they need to support the curtains, poles, and whatever force
you need to apply to open them.

There will be visible cords if you look carefully.  I've not seen how
'real' cord operated curtains work (except one which had a hollow metal
pole with the string inside, and a slot in the bottom face), it might be
the same way, it might be better, it's probably not worse.  If 'real' ones
are worse, someone tell me, and I'll try to license my idea to Swish :-)

It could be used on curtain rails too, but you'd probably need to use
screweyes or similar for the 'pulley' as the plastic blocks that fix
curtains rails to the wall would probably end up snagging the cord.

Hope someone finds it useful... (and if you want to stick a reference to it
on the Comfort web pages to help sell more curtain openers and bring the UK
price down, Andrew Roberts, you're welcome :-)))  )

Nigel


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