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We are looking at purchasing a house with a largish conservatory. It measures 23’ x 12’ and was built in 2009.
The current owners have added a www.supaliteroof.co.uk tiled roof.
Now, the roof system looks to be a decent one and the standard of work looks good. Inside it feels pretty much like a brick built extension with the plastered ceiling and Velux. However, I have a niggling concern that it’s going to throw some big bills at me at some point in the next decade or even need complete replacement during the 20+ years we hope to live there.
Am I being irrational or is a solid roofed conservatory really a Significantly higher maintenance/inferior proposition compared with the brick built alternative? If so, what are the main risks?
Cheers,
Paul
I like our Glass roof, needs a clean tho
In Feb this year we changed the roof of ours from polycarb crap to an insulated GRP flat roof with a roof lantern in the middle.
When it was cold it warmed up quickly and retained the heat well enough. When it's warm outside with the sun out it still gets warm but not as warm as before and can certainly still be used with opening windows etc but before it was like a sauna.
It cost more than I had anticipated but it has been a godsend over the past 5 months.
Our conservatory still has a double glazed door between it and the main house so is definitely a separate entity, yours may be different and so you may lose more heat that way than us. Can't speak for how yours will behave in colder weather but it's been a good change for us.
After this experience, I certainly wouldn't be put off a house that had a solid roof. It'll cost less to heat than a conservatory with a polycarb roof
Cheers. They’ve removed the door to the open plan dining room/kitchen.
If I had worries about bills 10 years down the line, I'd never have bought any of the houses I did, particularly the brand new one!.
Sounds good, get on with it.
They’ve removed the door to the open plan dining room/kitchen.
Temporarily for the summer, or completely removed the frames and made good the opening?
Not an expert, but I understand that for a 'conservatory' to satisfy building control under PD without planning, it has to be separated from the main house with external doors, and have it's own heating system/loop with separate controls and/or isolation. I would happily remove the sliding doors to our polycarb roofed conservatory during the summer months but the space is a similar size to yours and I'm sure that it would overwhelm the central heating in the winter.
I've been tempted by a solid roof for ours but longer term we want to raze it and extend properly, and the thermal efficiency is still a bit of an unknown between marketing figures and anecdotal evidence.
I'd at least try and find out about the current owners heating habits and costs over winter. The building control/planning stuff might appear in solicitors searches or survey further down the line as it was flagged for us.
The dividing doors may well have been there originally but have certainly been totally removed since. I’d already queried this aspect with the vendor to be told all the appropriate permissions are in place. I suspect that if it were built today from scratch to its current spec it would fall foul of planning permission, but like many Conservatories that are modified over time, it’s stayed off the radar. One for the solicitor to dig in to if it gets that far.
I’m not so concerned about the thermal efficiency side of things. It’s south facing, i live down south and the roof system is properly insulated.