House extension

We have a small south west facing conservatory.
Love it!
The light is wonderful.
When everywhere else in the house seems so dark at this time of year, it is light from morning till late afternoon.
I can watch the birds, (have Bird feeders on the windows) and the squirrel that visits often

I can read without putting a light on.
Lights on during the day is a bug bear of mine.

I use an artificial log burner at this time if year, but even a little sun and it soon warms.
In summer we open the windows and double doors.
In the evening we sit and watch the sun set.

My DGS love to play in conservatory.
That have decorated it by themselves.
It is at present their Christmas grotto

Technically a conservatory should be unheated and separated from the rest of the house. Don't tell your building inspector if you are heating it unless it was done at the time it was installed and given the OK.

ps DH put the floor heating on in the conservatory in anticipation of us having a relaxing afternoon in there. However, jobs kept presenting themselves so I just went to check the temperature before having a cuppa in there.

5C outside and 17.5C in the conservatory without the oil-filled radiator on. It probably would have been warmer if he had remembered to open the blinds and let the sun shine in!

Of course,whatever extension you have loopyloo, it is just one more room to clean.
Although if you win enough money you can afford to pay a cleaner

With underfloor heating and one oil filled radiator and we can sit in there on a freezing day (snow on the roof) at a lovely 23 or 24 degrees - Celsius that is.
Fahrenheit confuses me these days!

In summer, on days when we were out most of the day, we would come back to temperatures over 100degrees in our conservatory when it had been shut up all day. In winter months it dropped to around twenty. The sun never gets high enough here to warm it in the winter. Today, with a hard frost on the ground, no heating on, it is forty eight. In summer now, on the hottest days it doesn’t get any higher than eighty. Roof blinds might have helped in the summer but the result would have been the same in the winter.

I think if we do an extension it should be a good one. So I have bought some premium bonds and entered the itv completion to try to win some cash. Really I would like a brick building with contemporary looking glass. So as someone said it adds to the value of the house.
Then I can invite all my friends round for mince pies and wine.

Like Jallimall08, we have a modern, south facing conservatory with similar facilities. What is not mentioned is, that in Spring and Autumn, if there is any sunshine, the conservatory warms up to a comfortable temperature, not requiring any heating at all. It's lovely to sit out there and have breakfast/coffee and watch the birds on the feeders.

We will use our conservatory over the Christmas period as an extra room. It looks lovely with Christmas lights reflecting in the glass and there is room for a trestle table where we can all sit and eat our Christmas dinner.

I long for a shed, the back of my house will soon look like Steptoe's yard ☹️

when I say very hot I mean 30C!

I can never understand when people say a conservatory is baking in summer and freezing in winter - that's what our neighbours gleefully told us ours would be like when we were having one built. ?

Ours faces south-west - has opening windows and French doors so we can get a breeze through, double glazing, a solar reflecting roof, blinds, underfloor heating plus another heater for winter.
We have sat in there with snow on the roof and felt toasty warm, if it's very hot we like to be in the garden in a shady spot anyway.

Modern conservatory construction is quite different to what it used to be like.

I’m not sure what you want to do. We simply added 12 feet onto our lounge (we ‘used ‘ to have a very long Garden). We love the extra space it gives us. The room felt quite claustrophobic and wasn’t big enough for even four guests and us. You could extend the kitchen too without moving any plumbing.

Varian No DD's house, which is around 100 years old, was built as a tied house for a worker. Just the two rooms with a range and bed recess in the bigger one, and a huge lobby press in between. There was an identical cottage next door where a friend of my DD's lived as a child but by that time both houses had a bathroom and kitchen extension built on the back. Later still the cottages were sold and the new owners installed a staircase from the big room to the loft which is now DD's bedroom, very coom ceilinged but light and airy with wonderful views of the hills from the roof windows.

When I was a small child, we regularly visited 2 great Aunts who both lived in similar 2 roomed houses albeit in single story terraces with shared wash house and toilets round the back - a rural equivalent of the city tenements I suppose.

Although a "room and kitchen" might be considered quite a small home, for some folk it would have been a step up from a "single end" which was basically just one room, usually in a close where neighbours had to share a toilet. Nowadays that might be marketed as a "studio flat" but of course it would have to be en-suite.

When you talk about "a room and kitchen", Granny23, it brings back memories of my childhood in Glasgow. I have seen many of these wee places. The kitchen usually had a black range, a sink under the window and at the back of the room there would be a "bed recess" just big enough for a double bed and this area, often where the parents slept, could be curtained off.

These were generally not houses, but flats in a tenement block, but Glaswegians usually talk about "my house" even when they live in a flat.

Did you DD's home start off as a ground floor flat?

DD's house, which started life as a 'Room and Kitchen' had already had 2 extensions (a kitchen and a conservatory) so Building Control would not authorise a 3rd but did allow the Garage/utility room to be converted to accommodate a new shower room and toilet and a bedroom for DGS, now too old to share with his sister.

This left the problem of where to store everything that had previously lived in the Garage (tools, Christmas Decs, gardening stuff, which Son-out-law solved by building two kit shed/summer houses in the garden - one to be his man cave workshop and the other as a den for the DGC where they can entertain their friends and persue their hobbies.

Our neighbours have done something similar, building a fully insulated 'log cabin' in their garden to accommodate their DD and family when they come over for a month at a time.

We put a huge bay window extension on the dining room our last house. Whilst it did comply with planning and building regulations it was not as complex as a conservatory and did not need doors dividing it from the rest of the house. Also, it was a much cheaper structure to build.
As PP has said, consult an architect, I’m lucky DH is one.

We have a south facing conservatory with lots of windows to open and blinds for coolness and privacy. We attach a large gazebo in summer which is a great place for children to sleep in on campbeds/ sleeping bags. Hopeless in winter of course.

You should consult an architect. She will usually make an initial visit free of charge. She will look at your existing space, listen to your requirements, take account of your budget and make helpful suggestions. With the benefit of her advice, you may decide not to engage her but do something else but you should benefit from the meeting. To check whether she is properly qualified check with the Architects Registration Board

www.arb.org.uk/public-information/finding-an-architect/

Be careful. Looking at houses online (favourite time-wasting occupation!) so many people have ruined a good house with a bad extension. You can watch the houses hanging about for months and then having to be reduced to a price where buyers can afford to tear the extension down!

Exactly Greyduster.

Our new house had a conservatory and we baked in summer and froze in winter. We had an insulated roof out in, which wasn’t madly expensive and now it’s in use all year round. It’s great for dumping the grandchildren into when we adults want some peace and quiet.

You could have a conservatory with a tiled, insulated roof to cut down on the heat in the summer (they really do!) and a radiator running off your CH for the winter months. The only downside is that they take some light away from the room they are attached to, but skylights would solve that.

I have a gazebo, and a large shed at the bottom of the garden, but no electricity. Did get a quote for that and it was £500 , so said no. Summer entertaining is ok. I will continue to research. And Glammanana that sounds good idea.

With the prospect of a conservatory being too hot for you,how about a brick extension carrying on from your kitchen but finish with full length bi-folding glass doors which you can leave open (or closed) at your will,it will bring much light into the area and bring the outside "in" so to speak.I hope you know what I mean

A large shed with glazed doors along the long side. Friends have just bought a house with a shed like that and are amazed just how much they have used it. Theirs has power and they have a heater and light down there