conservatories

Glad you're enjoying your conservatory rosesarered.
I used to have a conservatory in my old house but found it was either too hot or too cold a lot of the time. It was south facing and not very big. About 8*10.
This time around, we bought a modern timber framed house that's well insulated and had a sunroom extension added last summer. Sunrooms are very popular here in
Ireland, more so than conservatories. With a sunroom, you have proper walls and a roof (plus tons of insulation) but it also has large triple glazed windows, two sets of French doors and glazed units in the centre of the roof. It's very light and warms up quickly when the suns out but doesn't get ridiculously hot due to the insulation. We even had a wood burning stove fitted which we've used a few times over Christmas.
It's by far my favourite room and I love it.

Mrs Mopp never saw your comment at the time, but yes, it was the best decision we ever made to get it done, we love it, and use it every day.Having a double radiator and also under floor heating means that we can use it all year round.We had terracotta tiling on the floor which doesn't fade and is easy to clean. Thanks again for all the replies which helped enormously.Hope that anyone else contemplating having a conservatory will read through this thread..

We had a conservatory built on the back of our house and it was the best decision! There are so many options to choose from especially nowadays with so many products. Similar to our windows, we researched online and found a website which was very useful called www.conservatoryonlineprices.co.uk.

It gives you guide prices on a range of styles but also lots of useful advice about various options available. We ended up using one of their recommended installers / suppliers. They did the brickwork as well as the windows, doors and roof. We found it easier to deal with one company as opposed to lots of different tradesmen. It took a few weeks to build but certainly added value. We did lots of internal decoration afterwards and furnished it the way we imagined. It is lovely waking up in the mornings and eating breakfast in our conservatory. We had bifold doors installed so we can open it out in the Spring / Summer time which is beautiful. Our glass roof lets in lots of light but it is warm and snug in the winter. Hope this helps.

Reviving this thread, Roses, hoping you enjoyed your conservatory this summer and that you are glad you went ahead with it?

We chose the Waterford one, we still like it.

Think we will be doing a fair bit of falling asleep there too.Know what he means about the highbacked chairs, my DH is tall so needs the same.The Andorra cane range looks nice and highbacked, so will visit the showroom in Swindon and have a sit on it.

ps every suite had to pass the DH test of 'If I fall asleep I want a chair-back high enough so that my head doesn't fall back'. As he falls asleep in the conservatory quite often it is just as well we chose one with a high back!

What we spent on fuel going round the country looking at furniture we could have put towards a nice neat Daro table and two chairs to match the suite! In the end we picked the suite I we liked in the first place and ended up with a cheaper table and two chairs - nice but don't match! False economy.

anno
nanabelle thanks, sure we will love it.
Thanks for DARO info roseq yes, no good buying cheap if you need to replace it soon is there? Didn't know they re-covered furniture either.

roses! I had a lovely conservatory on my last house and even after 14 years, I still miss it. There isn't room for one on this smaller house.

Hope you enjoy using it, roses.

Daro furniture is expensive but a friend who came and admired ours said they had bought something cheaper in a rush and will have to replace theirs soon (only about five years after purchase). And they offer a re-covering service.

How lovely - sounds just perfect. I wish you many happy days and evenings in there. So wish I had a conservatory - for plants and also for sitting in. One day maybe, if I ever get to move to a bungalow! (live in a town house so not possible here!)

The conservatory is now up! it looks great, and we took heed of all the helpful advice. Plasterer has just been , and someone coming to do the terracotta tiling in a day or two, and put wall lights up.Underfloor heating AND a radiator linked to the central heating.Had the patio re-laid as well and some garden beds raised, which looks neat.
Have to think about cane/rattan furniture now. Also paint for the walls.Wish conservatory furniture wasn't so expensive. Have looked at DARO cane, looks good.Thanks to all who replied with helpful comments, in fact without that, I think nothing would have been done, it spurred me on.

Just a final thank you to all who replied and were helpful, it was so useful to have a ticklist to ask the builder about. We have now got a builder who will start next month, so it's going to happen at last.yay!

Picking the furniture will be the nice bit! If only we were at that stage already.Thanks for all the advice.

Better to install it during build rather than wish later that you had done it.
Enjoy it when it's finished. But then you have to pick the furniture!

We are also planning to have a radiator added in there to our existing new central heating system, but underfloor electric heating as well.The builder said that was best and margaret had advised that too!

I think it would heat it to 20c quickly on a mild day and certainly don't need anything on a sunny day.
And the oil filled radiator has a thermostat as well.

Nice and cosy in here today, dolls, books, puzzles everwhere.

oh right i was imagining you were using it to heat the space to 20deg which would be quite extravagant

JessM I think our underfloor heating just takes the chill off, it cuts in if the temperature goes below 10c which is good if you have plants in there. I think I said before we use an oil filled radiator when it is chilly, but when (!) the sun is out it warms up quickly without that.

It is just nice to have the chill taken off the floor and nice for DGC when they sit on the floor to play.
DH keeps a very keen eye on our heating bills, they do not seem to be higher as we use the heat in the house less.

Going now to play on conservatory floor with DGD2.

Underfloor heating sounds nice - but it is not something you can turn on and off quickly is it. (because it takes ages to heat up the tiles etc before you get the benefit) Its the sort of thing you leave on all the time, night and day, for a big chunk of the year and in a conservatory, which is not insulated, it must use a lot of energy. If are planning to spend hours a day, in the winter, in your conservatory and someone has worked out the likely cost and you are not concerned about it, then it might work for you. It seems likely that fuel prices will continue to rise over the foreseeable future.
I'd take some expert advice on this if I was you.
If you are only going to use it for an hour here and there, maybe a plug in fan heater or similar might be more flexible.

A very good [local] builder came today, he was able to answer all our questions and told us exactly how big we would need the floor space to be[slighter larger than we had thought] and discussed heating, lighting, plastering, in fact everything!He will prepare a detailed estimate to send us, but we need to look for 2 other builders as soon as possible.Always best to have 3 quotes!Getting quite excited now, so hope I don't go 'off the boil' [ as I sometimes do, with projects.]

I would recommend looking into underfloor heatingif you like roses.more carefully than we did, although today DH put the U/h heating on and, with the sunshine today it was 25c in there when I went in later. It is now 19c with the sun gone.

Our very wellknown conservatory/double glazing provider had bought out the flooring firm so that was who fitted ours, seems to be some sort of electric mat, not pipes.
Am I allowed to mention names? Begins with A anyway, and you would expect to find them on the east coast.
I think the Romans had the right idea re underfloor heating, we haven't progressed much.

If you got underfloor heating there'll be no more cold feet!

We would definitely go for the underfloor heating, but the question is what kind? Electric 'pipes' or electric mat or hot water?Think that you need terracotta or ceramic tile floor if you have underfloor heating too.The Edwardian style seems to be the best space saving shape for a conservatory, but we have a builder coming this week and have pages of questions for him!This is the time that I start to get cold feet about the project [with or without underfloor heating.]