Conservatory roof.... can't decide!

[Puppyinaflat]

I moved into a house about 6 weeks ago. It has a large SW facing Edwardian style conservatory (which the previous owner had built) attached to the lounge.

There's no door between the lounge and the conservatory, just a wide, open doorway. One side of the conservatory is a fully bricked wall, the end is a dwarf wall with large windows and there are large double sliding patio doors, a dwarf wall and one large window on the other side. There's also no radiator in the conservatory. The roof is opaque polycarbonate.

The weather has been warm/hot and sunny pretty much since I moved in, and whilst the conservatory gets very warm over the course of the day, I wouldn't say it was unbearably hot.

However, when I first moved in (very early April) the conservatory got very cold in the evenings and that meant the lounge was also very cold.

It's a lovely space but it's currently pretty much empty and I really want to make it into a useable room. I've discounted putting a door on between the lounge and the conservatory because that would still mean it was an unusable room (although the lounge would certainly be warmer!)

I've been getting quotes for various types of "warm roof insulation" (I didn't realise there were so many options!) which are coming in at wildly varying prices.

However, I've been getting conflicting opinions from friends and family about just how much of a difference getting the roof insulated will make.

Does anyone have experience of getting this kind of work done, did it make a noticeable difference and what system did you use?

Thanks in advance 😊

I agree that doors would be the cheapest solution, but that still leaves the conservatory as a large area of wasted/unused space.

See this is my dilemma, wildly different opinions.

Whilst I know that reviews can be manipulated to some extent, the Trustpilot reviews (4.9/5) on the company/system I'm thinking of using say that it DOES make a significant difference to the winter temperatures in the conservatory and that it does make it a useable room. And there are a lot of reviews stretching back a long time.

I'm really confused

We were quoted £80k to knock down and replace our conservatory with a proper extension which was totally out of our budget. We've had insulation and panels added into the roof for £2.5k. It's not made too much difference to the light of the room, we already had glass doors between kitchen & conservatory. It's definitely much cooler than it has normally been in the heat, so we're happy so far. Remains to be seen how the temperature is during the winter, we're going to get a plug in radiator for the room but we anticipate using it more in the summer than winter anyway so we're relatively happy anyway.
We're making the best of it as we can because our ideal option is too expensive and moving isn't our plan right now, though will be eventually.

I think your first job should be to call your insurer and check that your insurance , particularly contents is actually valid with the current set up as if you did get burgled it could be a very expensive lesson , likewise for building cover if you had a fire .

You may find that you agreed to some assumptions regarding your house. Be careful about speaking to the insurance company and instead I would read the policy properly. If you ring and are in breach they could cancel your insurance which is a very expensive problem that has to be declared forever.

The poster who spent £20k probably has a very insulated roof. Of course it will make a difference. It’s like we had our extension and the garage now has insulation above, side and back to the house and the remaining side now with double skinned uninsulated wall. And a garage door. It is now much warmer than before. It is still cold however.

The OP conservatory doesn’t have heating. No matter how insulated you make it it is still going to be cold.

I have a north facing conservatory and I use it from Spring to Autumn with a polycarbonate roof. We don’t have a too hot problem. Just a too cold one. We don’t close the doors to it when it’s warm.

I haven't read all replies, but all of yours OP.

We built something very similar 6yrs ago- 1 wall is completely brick to the ceiling and along the fence line, dwarf walls elsewhere and no door between the house and conservatory. We had to get this passed by building regulations and inspected, because we removed the door.

Do you have any documentation from the previous owners about this? We approached 3 conservatory companies and none had ever heard of removing the door, so we had to find everything out ourselves! Do you know how long ago it was built?

Due to covid and multiple other reasons, we rented this property out within months of the conservatory being added. When I've been back- it has been hot in the summer, but not overly cold in the winter. We did install heating and connected it to the rest of the house though.

Other than replacing the roof, 1 suggestion would be heavy, thick curtains you could close at night between the rooms. We kept similar, because we'd had a large, sliding door with curtains before we installed the conservatory. You can also get conservatory blinds on the roof which might help somewhat.

We have a similar issue to yours OP, a house with a polycarbonate conservatory and no internal doors, opening onto our dining room. North facing as well so bloody freezing!!

It wasn’t flagged up as an issue on our survey and it’s because the whole building regs thing is a grey area if it was built some time ago. It probably met the building regs 25 years ago when it was built. People aren’t expected to keep their houses updated in accordance with all of the changes. It’s a similar situation with our loft conversion which met the regs 20 years ago but probably wouldn’t meet the new ones.

We’ve decided to have an insulated warm roof put on, along with building a full height wall, adding bifolds and replacing the frames and glass on the whole thing, plastering, spotlights etc We had quotes from 23-28k but the roof alone would have been 6-10k. We haven’t decided on heating yet but it will be either underfloor heating or a log burner.

Building control will sign off it off with no internal doors if it has an energy efficient warm roof.

@Puppyinaflatjust add fully glazed doors?

We put a roof on our conservatory in 2019, best thing ever. It has a radiator and is toasty warm in the winter. It stretches the entire back of my house with access through my kitchen. We also removed the back door.

We did the same to ours and it’s made the world of difference in terms of temperature and noise