Shutter security for shops and offices

In Torrevieja and the surrounding towns there are a great many offices on the ground floor of buildings: gestorías, estate agents, solicitors’ offices, surgeries, academies, small clinics, holiday let offices. Almost all of them have something in common: a well-locked front door and, at the sides or behind, windows with the traditional kind of roller shutter.

Those shutters are usually designed for light and heat, not for security.

How many hours a shop or office is left on its own

Do the sums: an office opens for a few hours in the morning and a few in the afternoon. The rest of the day, all night, Saturday afternoons, Sundays and bank holidays it is on its own. On the coast, moreover, there are businesses that slow down a great deal out of season or close for a few weeks a year.

During all those hours, what protects each window is its lowered shutter. And what is inside is usually worth something: computers, screens, work equipment, client files, sometimes some cash.

A window shutter and a roller shutter door are not the same

It is worth separating two things that are often confused:

• The roller shutter door is the large sheet-metal shutter that comes down in front of the shop window or the door of the premises. It has its own locks and its own problems, and we deal with it separately in shops and roller shutters.
• The window roller shutter is the slatted kind, like the one in a home, that covers the windows of the office, a toilet or an inner office looking onto a courtyard.

The T-profile reinforcement is for the second one. If you are not sure which one you have, a photo clears it up straight away.

The windows that cause most concern

In a shop or office the weak points are usually at the back:

• Windows that look onto an inner courtyard or a service alley.
• Windows of toilets or small storerooms that nobody looks at from the street.
• Side windows on corners with little light at night.

They are exactly the ones someone can try to open at leisure without anyone passing by.

What the reinforcement does on an office window

The same as in a home. Under the bottom slat a 4 mm T-shaped steel profile is glued and screwed, and because of its shape it does not bend to one side or the other. At both ends of that slat there are bolts that slot into the wall. With the slat rigid and held at both sides, the shutter becomes very hard to open from outside.

For a business it has a practical advantage: the window stays the same and the shutter is still yours. There is no need to change the frontage or put up a grille if you do not want to.

If the premises are rented

As the bolts slot into the wall, the reinforcement involves more than just the shutter. If the premises are rented, the sensible thing is to mention it to the owner first, as you would with any other change to the windows. If you need it, we explain what is done so that you can tell them.

How to ask for it for your business

Take photos of each window with the shutter down, from outside, and of the sides where the shutter meets the wall. Send them on WhatsApp and we will tell you which shutters can be reinforced. The quote is fixed and we give it to you before we start. You can pay by card, Bizum or cash.

We work 24 hours a day, so if you would rather there were no customers around while we work, we can talk about doing it outside your opening hours.

If your business is an office, the businesses and offices page has the rest of the services we provide for practices and offices. And the full explanation of the system is in shutter security.