Why own a patio cover?

Purchasing some outdoor patio furniture is a great way to turn your patio into a comfy and welcoming space for you and your family. If you have bought some furniture, you will know it isn't necessarily cheap. This means that you'll want to protect your investment. The easiest way to do this is by also buying some furniture covers. These give your furniture crucial protection against a number of threats.

 

#1 – Protection from the elements – Bad weather is extremely damaging to patio furniture, and keeping it in a decent condition despite this threat is a priority. If your area tends to experience snowfall and frost, then you definietly need to keep the furniture protected. Indeed with snowfall becoming ever more unpredictable, you need to be sure this winter that your furniture will be kept safe. Equally, if you live in a more tropical region that snow never affects, you will want to have covers because they protect against rain too!

 

#2 – Prevent Fading – Another important task that patio furniture covers perform is to protect your furniture from the sun. It might seem strange that, after extolling how important it is to protect against rain and snow, we suggest protection against the sun but following prolonged exposure to the sun, your furniture may begin to fade and look old. This is a natural process but it is not unavoidable. Patio furniture covers are actually designed to protect your furniture from the sun, as well as wetter weather, and they will ensure that your furniture will not fade in the summer.

 

#3 – No Animals – Animals can easily damage your patio furniture. If the furniture is not covered, you may have stray cats on your furniture tearing at it with their claws, or if you have a lot of birds your furniture may get covered in bird excrement. Patio Furniture Covers prevent this.

#4 – Prolong Life – Having spent already on your furniture, you probably don’t want to have to purchase it all again the next year. After spending so much money, you must ensure that you get as much use as possible out of the patio furniture. Thus purchasing patio furniture covers can help to prolong the life of your patio furniture. Even though the covers will cost a bit of money, the price is no where near the amount you'd pay for a new set of furniture!

So if saving money seems a sensible idea to you, take a look at our range of patio furniture covers on Alfresia.

Alfresia is an online retailer of garden furniture.

Why Protect Your Garden Furniture Against Water and Snow?

Yesterday we discussed Alfresia's range of garden furniture covers, which offer protection against the many forms of damage that can occur to your furniture. However, it is very common to underestimate the effects of one form of damage in particular: prolonged exposure to moisture is very dangerous for your furniture.

Damaging water can be present in either a liquid form or a vapour form - this is known as moisture - and the dangers of both, despite being common problems, are often overlooked by homeowners and gardeners. 

 

To combat these issues, many people move their furniture into an outdoor shed, but this can provide a false sense of security - if the shed has a leak, or the damage has already been done, then the roof won't help! Pay close attention to any swelling or shrinking of your furniture - if this occurs, then you are probably leaving your garden furniture vulnerable to the probelms associated with moisture exposure.

 There are three categories of 'dryness':

1. Totally Dry.
2. Exposed to moisture, or water, but not yet reached the "fiber" saturation point.
3. Fiber Saturation and beyond

If the supply of water vapours fluctuates, then the garden furniture will tend to stay in category 2. When timber goes below the fiber saturation point, the cell walls of the wood expand and contract. This is due to the rising and falling levels of moisture in the timber, and this is what causes shrinking and swelling of the garden furniture. This shrinking and swelling results in cracking, peeling, and paint defects. This all means that, whilst putting your furniture under a roof can help, you shouldn't hesitate to put a fitted garden cover over your bench/table/chair too!

How to protect against Water

Whilst moisture will slowly saturate the wood, liquid water damage will cause the wood to reach the point of total fiber saturation very rapidly. The result of this is the breakdown of the wood's internal structure. The furniture swiftly loses its strength and this means that your chair or bench may no longer be safe to sit on!

When wood is near the fiber saturation point, rot/decay occurs. Decay is degradation caused by various forms of fungi which of break down the structural components of the timber for food. The strength of wood comes from the polymers which form the wood cells. Thus, if the wood is brought rapidly to fiber saturation point and beyond, via rain or other liquid water, considerable loss of strength occurs before visible damage is even apparent. The suggestion to use waterproof covers bears repeating here.




Alfresia is a supplier of garden furniture.

Protective Covers

The christmas months can be a happy time of year, however the weather often means that, whilst you're cuddled up inside the house, your garden furniture is suffering. Rot and damp can set into wood, rust into BBQs and the wind can pull parts off your things.

If you were going out, you'd wrap yourself up with a coat before you left home. Similarly, if you want to protect your investment, there really is no need for you to expose your barbecues, patio heaters, braziers, wooden furniture or chimeneas to the elements at all.

The most common material in our garden covers range is 260gsm woven polyester which is breathable, weather resistant and UV stable. This means that not only will our all-weather covers protect your garden furniture and BBQs and heaters from birds and falling leaves, but also from pollution, sun damage (which can bleach the timber), snow, frost and rain.

Investing in one of our protective, all-weather durable covers is a smart way to ensure that you get the maximum usage out of your product. Our range is huge and we supply covers for many of our products, particularly for BBQs of all sizes, for chimeneas and for patio tables. Don't think that your furniture is automatically imnmune from any of these types of damage - nothing lasts forever, but with a smart purchase of an all-weather cover then their life expectancy will be dramatically increased.

Alfresia is an online retailer of garden furniture.