What to do when a shop's electric roller shutter is clogged

Four symptoms come up again and again, and each one points to a different cause. Confuse them and you end up paying for a clean where an adjustment was needed, or the other way round.

• It squeals going up, steadily, over the whole run. The curtain rubbing in the guide rail. This is the typical build-up, and it is the one a clean will fix.
• It jams at one specific point, always the same one. A lath is bent, or the guide rail is pinched at that spot. Cleaning will change nothing: this is mechanical.
• It comes down fine but struggles to go up. The counterbalance spring has lost its tension, or the motor is tiring. Mechanical again.
• It starts and stops in jolts, or stops on its own. Electrical safety cut-out, photocell, or motor in thermal protection. Only an installer should touch this.

The simple test, to run before calling anyone: move the shutter to mid-run and look at the side guide rails. If you see a grey, compacted paste — a mix of sand and old grease — build-up is indeed the main cause.

A shop shutter in Marrakech lives in a corridor of sand. The wind deposits it on the pavement, traffic lifts it back into the air, and it enters the guide rail from the bottom on every movement.

Sand on its own would be harmless. The problem comes from what it meets: the grease applied by the installer, or by a well-meaning shopkeeper. The two mix into an abrasive paste that, on every upward run, scrapes the edge of the curtain and wears through the coating. The shutter gets noisier, then stiffer, then marked.

The treatment follows this order, and no other:

1. Dry vacuuming of the guide rail along its full height, flat nozzle, shutter raised then shutter lowered to reach both positions.
2. Mechanical removal of the paste with a plastic scraper, never a metal tool that would score the profile.
3. Degreasing with lukewarm water and diluted alkaline product, never a strong solvent, which attacks the seal at the foot of the guide rail.
4. Full drying before the shutter is put back into service, because a damp guide rail picks dust straight back up.

The general principle for treating these profiles is set out on the roller shutters and closures page, and the same for sliding patio-door tracks on patio door cleaning.

Many shops in Marrakech are fitted with a micro-perforated curtain, which lets the window show through when the shutter is down. It is exactly the kind of surface a pressure washer destroys.

Three effects, all irreversible:

• Water passes through the perforations and lands on the window, the window graphics and the products on display, carrying the shutter's grime with it.
• Pressure distorts the micro-perforations and strips the coating at their edges, where the paint layer is thinnest. The curtain starts to rust from those points.
• Water gets into the roller box, stays there, and reaches the mechanical and electrical parts.

The method used is slower and safer: soft brushing with a suitable product, low-pressure rinsing, and wiping down the parts that will not dry on their own. The same restraint applies to fragile facade renders, as explained in our article on pressure-washing a facade.

This is the most common sequencing mistake on a shop front, and it costs a whole visit.

A window is washed in the morning. In the evening, the shutter comes down. On its way it drags down the dust that has built up in the roller box and in the upper part of the guide rail. The next morning, it goes back up and leaves a grey film across the top of the window, plus a series of vertical streaks at the contact points.

The rule is simple: the shutter is treated before the window, never the other way round. On a full visit, the order is:

1. the roller box, where it can be reached without dismantling anything,
2. the guide rail, vacuumed then degreased,
3. the curtain, both faces,
4. the threshold and the floor track,
5. finally the window and its frame.

This sequencing also explains the price: the reachable shutter is treated in the same visit as the shop window, with no separate line.

A shopfront is priced per m² of glass: 30 m² of shop windows at 25 MAD incl. VAT come to 750 MAD, raised to the shop minimum of 1,000 MAD; add 20 m² of glass inside the shop at 15 MAD per m² incl. VAT and the total reaches 1,050 MAD. The detail of treating a shopfront is on the shopfront cleaning page.

The scope needs to be clear, because that is where the bad surprises hide.

What our visit covers: vacuuming and degreasing the guide rails, cleaning both faces of the curtain, treating the threshold and the floor track, working the roller box where it is accessible, and cleaning the window and its frame in the same visit.

What belongs to the shutter engineer: greasing or lubricating the mechanism, adjusting the counterbalance spring, replacing a lath, work on the motor, the safety photocell or the electrical panel, and dismantling the roller box.

This is not an administrative precaution. A shutter re-greased poorly after cleaning picks up sand again within weeks, and a badly retensioned spring is dangerous. Our rule: leave a shutter at least as sound as it was before we arrived, and bill only for what we master. This division of responsibility is the same one set out on our guarantees.

Five situations are for the installer directly, and cleaning first will only delay the repair.

• The shutter stops mid-run or reverses direction with no command given.
• It tilts, meaning one side comes down faster than the other.
• A lath has come out of the guide rail or is visibly bent.
• The motor overheats or gives off a smell.
• The manual emergency operation no longer works, which is a safety issue before it is a comfort one.

In every other case — steady squealing, progressive stiffness, a dull curtain, dust settling back on the window — cleaning is the right answer, and it is the cheaper of the two.

A quarterly rhythm is enough for a city-centre shop; it moves to every two months on a busy road or in an industrial zone. Get an estimate here, with no commitment, and the full range of window services is on the Marrakech window cleaning page.