Aibu to build a conservatory?

[BanginChoons]

Hi, could I ask about your conservatory? I know that pricing can vary greatly but I could do with some advice. How big is it, how much did it cost? If you build it, do you regret it and would you do it differently with hindsight? I have had so many mixed opinions!

Background information is that I have 3 children, teens and pre teen, we live in a small 3 bed semi and could do with some additional living space.
I have a limited budget (single parent). I would like the room to be usable year round as it will be used as a dining room and games room. I have concerns about it being to hot or too cold etc.
Please let me know if there are other things I should consider as I am somewhat a novice at this!

I would also say my friend is an estate agent and they don’t add value. Most people talk about the cost of removing or converting them.

My in-laws have one. It’s freezing or boiling at the wrong ends of the year. It’s leaks, has huge condensation build up which drips, is full of bugs and is noisy as anything when it rains. And it’s not that old. Bugs just seem to get in somehow so it’s always full of webs and dead flies and fly dirt. It feels like a dusty, damp shed but they insist on using it all the time, they just refuse to clean it.

We had one built last summer - although we call it a conservatory it is more of an extension - all glass at the front with a dwarf wall and then half of the sides are brick with a small window at the top. We had a proper roof put on and we have a large oil filled radiator for out there. I have used it everyday since it was completed and it has added so much space to our house. It is 4m x 3m and we use it as an additional living room. It was looking like the blinds were going to be very expensive until a friend told me about the Ikea ones - so instead of over a thousand it cost me less than £100!

We were quoted silly amounts by the bigger companies and went with a local smaller company, the work was great and the price (we also got new front and back doors at the same time) was half what we were quoted!

Best thing we have done!

@GlossyCatsMum, sounds amazing. Would you mind sharing how big it is, and how much you paid for it?

I really didn't want to get one but we had to extend and my husband persuaded me and now I love ours, it's probably my most used room in the house. It's lovely to sit and look at the garden.
It's about 10 metres by 4 metres, we have our dining table at one end and a sofa and a couple of armchairs at the other end.
It's got underfloor heating and has never been cold. It was warm on some days in the summer but we just opened up the doors and windows.
I think my only regret would be not putting opening windows in the roof.
Cleaning I don't find too bad at all we have a window cleaner once a month and I do the inside windows the same. We have a robot hoover that goes on twice a day for the floor.
Insects are a bit of a pain but it's a small price to pay for what is otherwise a fantastic room.

Love ours. Used everyday. Very traditional cheap cheerful glass and dwarf walls. Have bought off peg blackout blinds and a powerful but efficient heater. Use it all year round. I'm an insect phobic and never noticed all these bugs everyone is on about! We do have carpet which I think helps with warmth and open windows daily to vent. Won't be without it. £6000 13 years ago never had a leak. So even if we do k ock down ta somepoint it's been totally value for money. Have French doors from dining room rather than sliding which makes it open up into house more

Hubby has just confirmed it is 4m across the back of the house by 3.5m out - it's given a great space and we have a small garden but we still have enough space for what we need. We paid about £18,500 ( can't remember exactly as we had other bits done by the same company) the bigger companies were quoting in excess of £30,000 without the other bits.

They're rubbish in this country, and I should think most who build them go on to regret the waste of money. A proper room with solid walls and a proper roof - ok.

I didn’t have a conservatory built as rules say they have to have external doors to them ( ie uvpc sliding doors or something as you would to the outside) and separate heating system when I was looking about 5 years ago. Plus hot in summer and cold in winter. I did a small brick extension inside, open plan to the dinning room, but lots of windows. Works for me

I hate mine. Too hot, too cold, too damp etc. Replacing it with a brick extension and can't wait!

Ours has been fab. It's sturdy and well built on dwarf walls and is over 20yrs old now. It's been used almost daily until recently (teens gone to uni). No issues at all with spiders or cobwebs. It has a freestanding heater which works well and is cool with all the doors and windows open in the summer.

When the boys were small it was a playroom, easy access to the garden and all their mess contained. As they got older they used it for Xbox and having freinds round. Now it's just somewhere nice to sit on a nice day.

I wouldn't ever fork out for a conservatory, my parents and I'm laws have them and they are both freezing in winter and like a greenhouse in summer. I think there are ways around this but as far as I'm aware it's expensive, is an extension possible?

Our house had one when we bought it. It’s awful. Freezing in winter (even with radiator). Boiling in the summer. Smells damp. If this was my forever home I’d knock it down and do an extension.

I love mine. It is cold in the winter but I’d say we use it a good 9 months of the year. We had ours built 4 years ago I think and paid £14k for 5x3m. We have an electric heater in there which does make it toasty if you do want to use it when it’s cooler. I love how warm it is in the summer.

Obviously an extension would have been better but it would also have been triple the price!

@nokidshere this would be my use for it too. This is exactly what I would want from it.

@bobstersmum I don't think I can afford an extension but to be honest I don't really have clue how much one would cost. I'm assuming a conservatory would be cheaper.

@Roominmyhouse thank you, that's really useful info.

I do like ours for about three separate months of the year (it was there when we bought the house). It's probably about 15 years old I think.

Pros:
It's nice to sit in during the spring and autumn
It's an extra internal room (full of DCs toys these days)

Cons:
It's boiling in the summer and freezing in winter. We do use it when it's cold because we've got a little electrical heater in there
The amount of dead woodlice in there in insane
When it rains heavily it's so loud you literally cannot sit in there

We will eventually pull it down and have a proper room built when the DCs are older and I can tolerate the mess!

wouldn't buy a property with a conservatory tbh as i wouldn't want the expense of getting rid of it, just don't like them.

For many people though the choice isn't between conservatory and extension, but between their house as it is, and conservatory.

Honestly Op a solid roof gets rid of all these problems!
Especially when you have walls on 3 sides decent height walls and not just dwarf walls.

This is the work whilst it was in progress the old polycarbonate roof coming off note the size of the wall and window on the left due to this feels more like an extension

We bought a house with a conservatory once. The word once is important. Never again. We are currently thinking about moving and if I see a house with a conservatory, it would have to be significantly undervalued to cover the cost of ripping it out and all the remedial work. Don't do it OP

I appear to be going against the flow here but I love my conservatory. We live in a terraced house and the conservatory goes the full width of the rear so about five metres wide and three metres deep. In order to comply with building regs (built in 2010) it had to have no heating and a glass roof. It has brick walls either side and floor to ceiling glass facing the garden. It is north facing so doesn’t get overly hot in the summer. It does get cold in the winter but warms up quickly if I open the doors between it and the dining room and I also have a Dyson hot and cold fan if I need it. I use it all year round. I do my ironing in there. We have a games console in there. I really love it.

Replaced our porch by a conservatory - not large, enough room for a table and can set 4 people at a pinch. S facing. No heating. We use it for virtually every meal from Feb to June, and again from Sep - Oct - when the sun's shining but it's not warm enough to sit outside. In winter it's a useful place to take off wellies and waterproofs. In summer we leave the door open. In spring and autumn we have a thermostatically controlled fan which takes warm air from the conservatory and channels it into the house.

If I wanted a room to use all the year round, I would go with solid insulated roof, otherwise it seems irresponsible in a "climate emergency" to be heating a room with such high heat loss.

virtually every meal - during sunshine hours in the early part of the year, evening meals too in autumn.

If we sell, judging form the responses here, I think I shall go back to describing it as a porch