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The edges of it. Explanation in writing is all that gets made here, and the list of what does not exist is worth stating outright. No number has ever been published. Nobody sits and advises. Nothing gets reached into from elsewhere, no fault is traced, no login is put back, and no piece of hardware is repaired. Across the whole site there is not one field asking for a password, a card, or any detail belonging to you, and nowhere to log in even if there were.
Whoever holds the Alexa name holds it still, as with Echo and Echo Dot. They turn up on these pages because there is no other way to indicate which hardware is meant. Should a piece of your own equipment have actually failed, that is a matter for its maker or for the shop that sold it.
Curtains & blinds · plain English
Among the most pleasing things in a house to put on a schedule, and among the least forgiving to order. Nearly every regret here starts with a window measured once, in a hurry.
Old houses are rarely square, and the difference between the top and the bottom of a window is often more than a centimetre.
Anything made to measure is cut to the figures you supplied, and no maker takes it back for being the wrong size. That is the entire exposure in this category, and it costs nothing to avoid.
Start here
What you already have decides whether this is a swap or a replacement. Tap whichever applies.
Tap what is there now
Your answer appears just underneath
A description of the possibilities. Anything touching mains wiring is work for a qualified electrician.
Power
This one decision governs the whole installation. Tap whichever fits your situation.
Tap how it will be powered
Your answer appears just underneath
A description of the options. Anything involving mains wiring belongs with an electrician.
In more detail
The part that decides whether the order arrives usable, and the part people rush.
A covering set into the opening looks tidier and lets the frame show. It also makes clearance a matter of millimetres: cut one to the exact width and it will rub along the sides every time it moves. Every maker subtracts something for that — establish whether they are subtracting it or assuming you already have.
Hung outside instead, the covering sits on the wall and laps over the opening at both edges. It forgives a crooked window, seals the light better at the sides, and demands a stretch of wall above the frame that plenty of rooms simply do not have.
Take the width at the head, at the waist and at the sill. For anything sitting inside the opening, order to whichever came out smallest — sized to the widest point it will seize where the opening pinches. Run the drop down both edges as well, on the same reasoning.
Whatever the maker's own sheet says, follow that instead of this page. They are cutting glass and fabric to the figures you send, with their own subtractions already folded in.
A looped cord hanging beside a window is a documented strangulation risk to small children, and rules in a growing number of places now demand a safety fitting or forbid certain designs outright. Motorising the covering does away with the cord altogether.
That is a real safety case rather than a marketing one, and it is the single strongest reason to spend the money in a child's bedroom before spending it anywhere else.
These motors are audible. Several seconds of soft mechanical whirring, every time anything moves. Set to a morning schedule in a bedroom, that is either a pleasant way to surface or a daily annoyance, and which one depends entirely on who is sleeping there.
Paying more genuinely buys a quieter motor. Anybody fitting these where somebody sleeps ought to weigh that up rather than discover it.
Questions
Each answer opens where you tap it.
On a track, often yes — a motor that runs along the rail and pulls the existing curtains. That is the cheapest route into this category by a distance.
On a pole it is much less likely, and for venetian or vertical blinds the mechanism is integral rather than a simple drive, so replacement is usually the realistic answer.
The quoted span runs from half a year to a whole one, and what decides it is traffic: a covering that moves twice daily will outlast one chasing the sun across an afternoon by a wide margin.
Set a solar strip against glass that sees decent daylight and it may never want a cable at all. Face it north through a British January and it will fall behind.
The routine survives, generally. Schedules tend to live either on a hub in the house or inside the motor itself, so seven o'clock remains seven o'clock whatever the broadband is doing.
Reaching it from elsewhere is what goes, along with voice on several platforms. Establish where a given system files its schedule before parting with money.
Battery models generally pass, because putting one up is no different from putting up any covering: brackets into the frame or the wall over it, which is the same permission an ordinary blind requires.
Anything wired is another matter and wants the landlord saying yes on paper. Read the agreement before committing to something cut to your figures.
Keep going
All free to read, all published here.