Making a conservatory useable all year round

[Travelcrazy]

We are looking at buying a house with this conservatory but we will need to be comfortable in it all year round because we will be using it as a dining room and I would need to be be working full time in there.
It only has a single door and three small top opening windows so I am concerned I will cook! It is a south facing garden.
Is there a way of keeping it cooler in summer and will it be massively expensive?
My Dh has said that he can put bigger radiators in so it should be ok in winter.
Thanks for any help.

We got a proper roof put on ours. It does make a difference especially in the winter. It Still gets a bit warm in the summer though but we do need to invest in some blinds.
It makes it feel more like a proper useable room.

@Sarfar45was it very expensive? Thanks for your reply

Another vote for a proper roof, made an enormous difference. We waited ages to do it as we hadn’t any money but the difference is amazing. Still a warmer room but very much a useable one, we use it everyday. Noise insulation from new roof is also amazing, the lightest rain was deafening before. Not now.

I had a conservatory that big and it was freezing in winter and boiling in summer (and we didn't have clear glass!) You will never be able to keep it warm enough sorry. We used ours as a dining room too. My advice is to do what we did- pull it down and build a proper extension!

The cost difference from what I can gather is quite big though.

OP we have the same issue. I’m going to get a couple of conservatory companies in to talk about redesigning ours, we need to definitely change the roof anyway as we hate the shape of it and there’s a leak every bloody winter!

What were the costs of the solid rooves? My neighbour had a flat glass fibre roof after one similar to your picture,it's so dark in the now, even on a bright sunny day, always got lights on. We tried to get a ball park figure,all the companies insist on visiting, but got fed up with different companies in the past pestering us. Our conservatory is 7x 4 mtr.. we also use it as a dining room and the pc is out there. We were quoted thousands for roof blinds, I bought cheap ones, they stay up while it's busy..2 big radiators and used all year,much lighter and brighter than the living room.

OP as yours is south facing you really will cook in there in summer. And a bigger radiator won't help that much in winter because there is so much glass. You would need at the very least to reroof it and even that may not be enough. I would not rely on using it for much of the year.

Knock it down and build an extension. You won’t regret it.

Solid roof with velux windows (otherwise your adjoining room will be very dark). Make sure the seals are all good on the frames and potentially add extra internal insulation to the pony walls. Then put up decent honeycomb blinds to prevent heat loss from all that glass in the winter.

Our conservatory, also south facing, had a polycarbonate roof and hit over 50°C in summer and dropped to under 1°C in winter! It was unusable. We replaced the roof with a fibreglass one which looks like tiles but is light enough for the conservatory walls to support it. As we don’t have radiators in our conservatory, we also fitted a small air to air heat pump air conditioner which warms in winter and cools in summer. It’s not expensive to run as it gives 4 units worth of heating/cooling for 1 unit of electricity. It works very well and makes the room comfortable all year round.
With yours, increasing the size of the radiators may help in winter but will not help in summer. Even with a solid roof it doesn’t need to be particularly warm in summer for our conservatory to stoke up to uncomfortable temperatures as soon as the sun comes out.

@Travelcrazy If you buy the house, factor in replacing the conservatory.
Ours is very similar and south facing.
When we moved in, I also used it as office space and we have used as a dining room.
Perhaps 30% of the year, it's perfect temperature but it is never fully warm in depths of winter and in hot summer, you literally can't stand on the floor (candles melt if left in there).
We're moving as it just wasn't financially worthwhile to replace with a proper extension (quoted region of 40k).
When looking at houses, one thing on list was no conservatory!
As for heaters, our heating engineer said absolutely not to add radiators off existing system as it would just be a waste of money.
We used free standing heaters (at least 2) with an electric fire if we wanted to use in winter.

I spent 10k having a proper roof put on mine. It turned the room from unusable to a room that we use every day. Its difficult to say how much yours would cost as it depends on what solution you go for and its worked out by square meters. Ideally you needs some quotes to work out what is best. Moving for me wasn't an option and I happened to have the cash due to redundancy.

Thanks for all the replies, ripping it down and building an extension is out of the question due to costs. I am reluctant to walk away because the house has a huge garden backing on to woods which is stunning but we can't buy it without resolving it because the house won't work without that extra space. It is so frustrating!
Would installing hot/cold air conditioning work?

The problem is that glass is a poor insulator so it doesn’t retain the heat in winter. You could buy the house and do the roof at another time when you can afford it.

We have a 10x12 conservatory with all glass. Its warm in winter with one oil filled radiator, in fact sometimes it gets too warm

We are north facing but in summer it obviously gets warm. We have the solar glass. If it was south facing I would get blinds for the roof. No way would I get a solid roof, it owuld make the dining room dark and would negate the lovely views of the sky we have, its the loveliest room in the house and we use it all year round. I regret not getting a top opening or opening windows on both sides.

I keep meaning to get some blinds but it never gets so hot and horrible that Im motivated to do it. Perhaps if we were at home during the day it might be different because as you say you plan to work from home in yours. By the evening its lovely and cool.

Yours is bigger so a couple of rads would be needed, we just tuck our one down the side of the sofa. I also have a wool underlay on top of the concrete floor and a big jute rug on top of that so that it looks like wall to wall carpet. Lots of rugs and furnishings on top of that. Its another living room for us.

Something I have found with conservatories is that the heat in summer is also a problem in the room(s) that the conservatory is built onto. If the adjoining room is open to the conservatory or only vents through the conservatory it is absolutely impossible to regulate the heat in there too.

Per a PP, it's impossible to regulate the heat of the room the conservatory leads into. We can't get our lounge below 26 ever in the summer - it's stifling.

Ours gets to 5 degrees in winter and come February, 42 degrees. That's right - it was at its worst before Spring. It's raised up several meters, suspended wooden floors, UFH, solid roof.

It's compounded by being surrounded on three levels by flagstones, which absorb heat, and being above a river, which reflects it.

I will only ever see a conservatory as a liability from now on.

On a positive note, anything I put in there to dry is dry by lunchtime the following day.

It's usable from October to December, and that's it.

Rooms are not meant to be open to the conservatory. A strict rule in this house is that when its very hot or very cold the conservatory door must be shut. OH ignores this all the time however. If the door is shut it doesnt affect the dining room at all.

I've seen quite a few houses for sale this year where they've smashed down a kitchen wall and put a conservatory there - gives the illusion of more space. Must feel like cooking in an incubator.

Yes I mean dont get me wrong I would love it for the space and light but its not practical

I think this 👆 is basically our plan.

Proper roof made an enormous difference to ours, but it was expensive (£21k for us). Note that there are lots of different levels of solid roofs that can be retrofitted. I'm sure the cheaper end will make some difference, but are probably a waste of money in the long run - better wait and get it done properly, if needed.

We also have aircon in ours, fitted when it was built. Extremely useful in both summer and winter, cools and heats very effectively if needed.

I reckon that conservatory, as pictured and in a South-facing garden, will be pretty much unusable a lot of the time - but there are certainly things you can do at a much lower cost than ripping it down and starting again to make it great.

It also wouldn't comply with building regs. You have to have a thermal break between a habitable room in a house and a conservatory.

Yes correct and the heating system out there cant be connected I think to the house heating system can it?

We had a solid roof put on ours with lantern lights - we love it! It's made such a difference and feels like a proper room. It cost nearly £20k but we had the attached garage re-roofed at the same time. Don't bother putting extra rads in, they won't make a jot of difference with the roof like that. Get an electric fan heater instead.