Month: April 2011

The many uses of glass louvres

Stuart

Do you know your brise soleil from your glass louvres?  If you are dealing with an architectural project, the first thing you might need to do is to make sure you understand the key terms that are often thrown around.  Beneath the technical language often lie a few easy concepts that, once explained, are really quite straightforward and could be very useful for your project.  If you would like to be confident when talking to an architect about external louvres, this article should be of some help.

The phrase ‘brise soleil’ is from the French, meaning ‘sun breaker’.  The term refers to a variety of permanent sun-shading techniques, and the beauty of the technique is the range of architectural strategies that come under this umbrella – from the basic patterned walls used by Le Corbusier to the vast mechanical, pattern-creating devices of the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris.  In its classic form, this sun breaker is basically a horizontal projection extending from the sun-side façade of a building.  Façades with a large amount of glass can be in danger of overheating during the summer, and fitting a brise-soleil is a very effective way of stopping this from happening.  The structure can be further tailored by incorporating louvres, which prevent high angle summer sun falling on the façade, and allow low-angle winter sun to provide passive solar heating.

Glass is one of the most useful and multifunctional building products there is.  It can be used for many purposes, from creating striking glass façades to elegant internal screen solutions.  Glass louvres are used to control solar heat gain within buildings, and have traditionally been tinted to create the desired effect.  More elaborate finishes are available, too.  Ceramic frits, for example, involve baking a type of paint onto the glass.  These type of finishes create a more exciting appearance while reflecting the sun’s heat and helping to maintain a comfortable interior temperature.  These days, glass louvres are taking on a more active role in buildings than ever before, with light redirection and photovoltaic systems allowing for various different functions.  These louvres can offer building owners and specifiers realistic solutions in terms of creating environmentally friendly buildings by minimising the need for air conditioning while providing renewable energy sources as well as shading.

Basic external louvres, on the other hand, are usually mounted in the vertical, with a row of horizontal blades shaped and positioned to minimise the ingress of water.  With relatively simple functions such as providing shade from the sun, the brise soleil, glass louvres and the like should not provoke confusion.  Once you know what they are and how they work, it should be fairly simple to assess which solution would be right for your project.

Please visit http://www.maplesunscreening.co.uk/ for further information about this topic.

http://www.maplesunscreening.co.uk/

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How bacs can improve processes in your business

Emma

It is a typical issue in most modern companies, however large and successful they are – keeping control over financial transactions can present real difficulties. In order to pass audits and ensure cost effectiveness, it is crucial that businesses can make payments securely and track the payments they collect.  It is often the case that bacs software is the best way to facilitate this.  Processing payments electronically with bacs, or bankers’ automated clearing services, can optimise the security and efficiency of your transactions and save you valuable time and money. Taking a few working days to clear, bacs payments are a highly effective way of keeping on top of your firm’s finances.

Bacs software solutions can be adapted to the needs of individual businesses, so they can improve the security and efficiency of each firm in the most appropriate way.  The systems cater for multiple divisions and operating procedures, which has the added bonus of giving finance officers the broad perspective that is very useful in assessing the company’s financial position and making strategic decisions.

The need to move data or information between applications has often proved a challenge for businesses, necessitating complex integration and highly skilled staff.  It should be a relief to the business world that this often difficult process is no longer necessary.  Essentially, bacs empowers organisations globally to transfer data between banks and customers.  Invented  in 1968 as the Inter-Bank Computer Bureau, the system has gained many adherents as it has developed.  Nowadays, the need for paper documents as part of the money transfer process seems largely outdated.  The benefits of this system go further than cost and time efficiency: phasing out  paper documents frees up space in the workplace , allowing for more staff or useful technology such as computers where filing cabinets might have been. With companies increasingly looking to improve their environmental credentials, limiting paper wastage is a great added bonus of digitising payment processes.

Clearly, bacs software exists to make our lives easier, and it just does not make sense not to take advantage of it. The savings in terms of time, money and space that can be made by introducing bacs to your workplace are so significant that it is surely worth the time that it takes retraining your staff to adapt to the change. Compared with regular  payments, bacs payments are quicker, smoother and more hassle free than anything that has been used in the past.

Please visit http://www.bottomline.co.uk/ for further information about this topic.

http://www.bottomline.co.uk/

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Cash Genie can provide a useful service when you need it most.

Jo

No one wants to borrow money – it’s a bad idea. Of course it can help sometimes, and occasionally there’s just no alternative (who would be able to buy a house without a mortgage, for example?) but generally speaking, it’s a last resort. Borrowing money is expensive. That cost can be a few pounds, or a few percent of the original loan, in the best cases; in the worst, it can double, triple or even worse the amount of money you borrow. Pay off a regular credit card at the minimum rate, for example (2 percent or £5 minimum), and the amount of money you actually end up paying will be around three times higher than the amount you borrow. Under those circumstances, that pair of shoes or flatscreen TV you put on the VISA don’t really seem such a great buy after all. Cash Genie is a commercial lender, so it’s worth knowing exactly what debt you’re taking on, but in this case it’s simpler than usual.

For example, loans are for one month only. You’ll pay 30 percent for a sum of money between £75 and £750 (that is, paying back £100 to £1,000). That may seem expensive, but the arrangement basically means that the cost is a flat fee: these loans aren’t meant to be rolled over like a long-term loan, in the same way that a credit card or mortgage is. You pay the 30 percent and that’s it: there’s no room for compound interest – that nasty reality whereby interest is paid on interest as the months go by – which can stretch a credit card bill out for years.

30 percent is a high rate for a month (although there are lenders who will charge you much more) so the way to figure out whether it’s worth it is simple: if you don’t take the loan, will you end up paying more than that fee in other ways – for example, fines for missed payments, or the loss of vital services? If so, and there’s no other option, taking the Cash Genie loan simply makes good mathematical sense. Ideally, it’s going to be a one-off that gets you out of trouble, and gives you enough breathing space to put some budgeting processes in place that mean you won’t have to rely on loans in the future. That’s the nature of short-term loans, after all: they’re not supposed to be an ongoing feature of your life.

Please visit http://www.cashgenie.co.uk/ for further information about this topic.

http://www.cashgenie.co.uk/

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Phono stage explained

Emma

Connecting amplifiers to a turntable and an audio system should be simple, but we are all familiar with that frustrating moment when we think it is all ready to go, but the sound just will not come out of the amp at the required volume.  The reason for this can be that most of today’s amplifiers are not fitted with an input socket market turntable, so they cannot be connected without a phono preamp.  This is essentially an electronic circuit or stage that deals with the correct amplification of the phono cartridge and sends it to the amp or audio system. It is also often termed a phono stage or a phono amp, but these all refer to the same thing.

Beneath all these technical terms is a simple box that connects between a turntable and an amplifier.  In order to decide which one to choose and what sort of price to go for, an understanding of how the phono amp works may be of some use.  When vinyl records were the norm, integrated amplifiers featured an input for the record player or turntable as standard, but this began to stop when analogue sources started to become digital in origin.  As digital sources have similar voltages, a preamp-stage was often no longer required, as a simple switch that selects between inputs was enough.  For this reason, the ‘passive preamp’ was created, but rather than containing an actual preamp, these boxes just house switches and relays.

For those who require an actual preamp, it is just a matter of obtaining a phono stage, linking up the turntable to it, and hooking up the output from the preamp to your amplifier.  The performance you will get will be dependent on a few factors, and the prices vary greatly.  An extremely cheap preamp is generally unlikely to provide you with excellent quality audio, but equally, some budget preamps are dressed up as very costly ones. The safest option for novices is to go for a medium priced one, which will at least ensure that you are not severely overcharged for an inferior product.

It is important, therefore, not to be confused by the technicalities.  The phono stage, the phono preamp and the phono amp all have the same function, that of connecting your amp to your turntable.  With this technology in place, you should be able to play all your favourite records with impeccable sound and absolutely no stress.  As long as all your other equipment works, that is!

Please visit http://www.whestaudio.co.uk/ for further information about this topic.

http://www.whestaudio.co.uk/

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