What do you do in your conservatory?

[Leavethedooropen]

I live in a small 2 bed terraced and could do with some extra space. I am thinking of a small conservatory off the kitchen at the back of the house, small being the operative word. I’ve just had someone out to give a quote which was £7-10,000.

I am now trying to imagine it and what I would do with the space eg dining table for everyday eating, small sofa for a coffee/tv?

I know lots of people say they don’t use their conservatory so I’m wondering what you do with yours?

It's our dinning room, built off of the French doors in the lounge. it's got one brick wall against the boundary fence a small wall on the other 2 walls. We use it all year around. Got an oil heater in there for winter and keep the doors open during summer.

our old house had a small very old plastic roofed north facing conservatory. we used it as a play room and it was great to keep all the toys our the way but became a glorified cupboard as they preferred to bring the toys into the lounge as it was either too cold even though it had a radiator in there or they wanted to watch the tv. then as they got a bit older it just became guinea pig room/dumping ground.

We have just moved and the new house has a much larger more modern conservatory. its south facing and even when the boiler broke on a cold almost snowy feb week the conservatory wasnt too cold.
We have put a sofa and TV with kids games consoles at one end and the other has large fuinea pig cage and a untility area. its so usable and feels like a proper room.

We have underfloor heating and a radiator and use it pretty much all year around. It has a craft table, sofa and toys so it's essentially the playroom. The floor is tiled and had a large rug. It is way better than the one in our old house but probably cost more. The previous owners put it in about 7 years ago for 20k

Ours is an eating space off the kitchen (it is open to the kitchen).
We don't use it for evening meals in the winter as it's too cold, but the majority of other meals. We have a dining room as well, but but conservatory is lovely.
We also spend quite a lot of time sitting in it, chatting, reading, whatever.

We have a dining table and small sofa in ours which is off the kitchen.

We have a separate dining room and living room so we don't use the conservatory when it's very cold and when it's very hot we are outside anyway. I wouldn't want it to be relied on for dining.

We really enjoy our conservatory, it's a lovely place to sit in peace, bright and looks over the garden. Eating in there feels good too when it's bright but not warm enough to eat outside.

I love ours. We use it as a 2nd sitting room. No TV, there's a dock for a Bluetooth speaker, massive sofas and some plants. I sit and read, play guitar and chill with DH in ours. Its a tall gabled roof which is lit up with fairy lights at night and feels lovely and cosy. Its got central heating plumbed in and a Dyson fan for hotter days but we'd generally open the doors too.

We have a huge conservatory installed by the previous owners. It’s a big space that accommodates a seating area, storage and when it’s in winter we use as a gym space for turbo trainers etc. It’s too cold to use in winter to sit in, unless an unusually sunny few days, despite two large radiators. In summer, it’s so hot it’s a glorified drying room.

I hate it and we’re planning on knocking it down next year to gain back patio space and build a side extension instead. I would never recommend one, if you can afford it would recommend extending and getting an all year round useable space.

Mine has a couch and the beer fridge.

Overwintering plants (chilli peppers are bloody hard as an annual) and early planting ( so another greenhousey extension to garden one rather than extension to house ) and and a great drying area too. I would prefer a garden room tbh with a proper roof and skylight and a little bit of wall - but that’s never going to happen unless I come into a lot of unexpected money.
Having said all that, In spring and autumn it’s undeniably lovely to pop out and enjoy the sun with a cuppa when it might be too chilly for outside sitting. We have doors separating it from the rest of the house - very much needed in both summer and winter.

As a second living room/playroom with sofa, chair and TV. Has a different vibe than the actual living room and feels like a more peaceful place to be, probably as closer to the garden. Its south facing and much nicer to be in during the day than the north facing living room. We had an insulated ceiling put in which has improved the brightness and temperature control and a thick rug on the floor.

Ours is a joint playroom/office space. It's north west facing so not unbearably hot in the summer and in the winter we have a small heater in there. It's used constantly, especially now DH and I are both working from home.

Ours is probably the most used room in the house. We eat in there every day and it also has a couple of sofas and armchairs and we tend to congregate in there during the daytime.
We have underfloor heating for cold weather and just open the doors up if it's hot in Summer, it's in shade from around mid morning onwards though which helps with the heat.

So many unused, unloved conservatories out there! All sorts of issues if it's south or south-west facing, as it'll get very hot in the summer and you'll need blinds, which always look terrible. Fabrics fade and a lot of materials (including vinyls) perish because of the UV. And you can't watch the TV because of screen glare. Phones and computers and tablets can overheat. No wonder so many conservatories end up being used as store rooms or places to dry laundry.

And then there's all the conservatories that have one side wall with a view of a horrible fence or grotty garden shed...

Worst of all are the ones where people have extended their kitchens by knocking out a whole wall and adding a conservatory — some of them using that plastic sheeting material for a roof instead of proper double-glazing. So their kitchen is permanently freezing, their heating bills go through the roof and they have a crap EPC rating. Always, always, always have doors or walls between the conservatory and the rest of the house, otherwise it just drains heat.

No. Build a proper, insulated and roofed extension designed to maximise the light and the view of the garden.

Ours has a four person dining table but during winter it's just a big fridge to us. Right now I'm using it as a greenhouse to grow seedlings that are too tender to go out. My husband often uses it as a dumping ground for his projects. I briefly used it as office space when the weather was nicer last year.It's a small space but very badly insulated so doesn't really work for a single function throughout the year. It would cost a fortune to keep it comfortably warm during winter.

I love mine. Its got the dinning table in and the other side has a small sofa and comfortable chair. Use it a year round, it is chilly in winter but quickly warms up after 10 minutes of the heater and doesn't seem to get too hot in summer. I love sitting with a coffee watching the birds and reading.
One day I would like to change the roof from the plastic thing it has now but that's a job for the future.

I haven't got one but my friend has converted hers to a bedroom for her daughter
( who is a young adult)
It has worked out well.

Good point about keeping a door from the kitchen to the conservatory. I asked the guy about that and he said it was up to me.

Believe me, as someone who works in the green construction technology sector, not having good double or triple-glazed doors sealing off your conservatory from the rest of the house is a home-heating disaster. Perhaps if you live in the balmy south and have the money to keep an Aga running 24/7 you can get away with it, but a glass extension, any kind of glass extension, that has no method of sealing it off from the rest of the property, is going to lose a lot of heat.

Worst of all are the ones where people have extended their kitchens by knocking out a whole wall and adding a conservatory — some of them using that plastic sheeting material for a roof instead of proper double-glazing. So their kitchen is permanently freezing, their heating bills go through the roof and they have a crap EPC rating. Always, always, always have doors or walls between the conservatory and the rest of the house, otherwise it just drains heat.
We've knocked out half of the wall which opens onto the kitchen, the conservatory (with proper glass roof) and the kitchen are both heated so neither are freezing. Our heating bill is less than our smaller older house with no conservatory but a permanently freezing cellar.

No. Build a proper, insulated and roofed extension designed to maximise the light and the view of the garden.
To be fair this was our original plan but due to regs we could barely have any glass. What we could have looked pretty dingy compared to the conservatory which is light, bright and can be opened seamlessly onto the garden.

There's no reason why you should trust me, you don't know me. But I'm trained to do SAP calculations (www.eden.gov.uk/planning-and-building/building-control/building-control-guidance-notes/sap-calculations-explained/) and I know that if you had decent doors sealing off your conservatory your bills would be even lower and your carbon footprint smaller. It's not me being argumentative, it's down to the U-value of glass.

Ours (uPVC not brick, 30 years old, SW facing) was a junk room before DC, but is now a play room cum second living room. It was always freezing in winter and baking in summer, but a couple of years ago DH and FIL put in some insulation and plasterboard over the solid panels, then we got that plastered and painted, and had a new thick vinyl floor laid, and we've got an electric heater in there so we can use it a bit in winter. Still baking in summer though!

We've got a small sofa, a Kallax unit doubling as a bench with cushion, a side table, a play table, a nice yucca plant and a book box in there. It's really lovely now and we use it a lot more. Total cost with all the bits was probably only about £1000, so definitely worth it for us to make the best of what we've got.

I wouldn't build a new one though I'm afraid!

Ours is only small, maybe 3m x 3m. It is too cold most of the time to do much in unless it is a sunny day, even though it does have a radiator. It is the main route out to our back garden from the house so it's a bit of a walk through and we have a shoe rack with wellies, muddy shoes and roller skates on.

It also houses a heated airer, a drum kit, a big set of drawers and shelves for the kids 'arts& crafts stuff' and a table and chair at which to do said arts and crafts. We also grow seedlings on the window sills.

It was here when we moved and the roof leaks, but quotes for a new roof are £3-5000 so far, so dh has patched it with a sheet of clear tarpaulin! We wouldn't choose to have another conservatory. It's not a useable room for us most of the year, more an extra storage area/drying area/greenhouse. We don't really want to replace the roof, we'd rather get rid and put a proper room on, but that costs even more, so we just muddle along with the tarpaulin for now!

Even if it wasn't full of stuff, and we put chairs and a table etc in, it wouldn't be big enough for entertaining other people, or to use as a dining area. So we're just stuck with it until we can afford to change it.

My family used it as the dining room. Although we had decent heaters in it. Also based in Scotland so only a few days a year when it's too too hot, however ours opens up to the decking. It's be good for overflow for when we used to have parties (held the buffet table).

Love ours, especially at this time of year. We have 2 sofas and a piano plus kallax units with toys and games in. It's used as another sitting room/ playroom. We do also dry laundry in here quite a bit by hanging it over the rail that goes across at ceiling height or on the heated airer. It is cold in winter though and too dark on winter evenings. We have blinds on the roof which make it look nicer and help to insulate. There are window blinds too but we don't use them much.

It's not me being argumentative, it's down to the U-value of glass.

My - hazy - memory of this is that individual components have a resistance value which, when a calculation is done, combine to provide a U value of the wall etc. The U value of a conservatory window is therefore made up of the resistance values of the glass, plus the air in between the glass.

I may be remembering incorrectly, however, as it's been a long time since I spent many hours in meetings with insulation manufacturers about such things!