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 had a south facing conservatory and it was freezing in winter and awful in summer....we've replaced it with an extension that is lovely.

I have a very large south facing conservatory. It has a tinted polycarbonate roof.
I don't find it unusable in summer except when it's a proper heatwave. So in 2024 I would say there was no time it was unusable. This year there have been several days but not that many. It's very pleasant from February to early November but the other three months in needs heating which is very expensive.

Can you elaborate on this please?
Thanks very much

You cant have the house open to a conservatory, you have to have an external grade door between the house and the conservatory

On the other hand if you build an extension, you can have that open as thats a fully insulated room, connected to the internal heating system

You can go ahead and have an open conservatory, it justmeans when you come to sell someone will be put off. That might not bother you. We nearly bought a house with an open conservatory, I wasnt bothered but I knew it wasnt legal.

@soupyspoon thank you, it isnt open it has a wall and a sliding door but there are definitely 2 radiators in there which may be a no no

We had a guardian roof put on ours recently. It is now waterproof but it was still VERY cold this winter and it still gets VERY hot on really sunny days. Think minimum 2 degrees winter and 35 degrees summer. (We do have a couple of skylights)Days like today are fine though, those are the extremes. We don’t have a radiator in here as doesn’t comply with building regs (and you have to keep an external door between the house and conservatory)

We have drapes hanging from the roof of ours, and proper curtains; as our conservatory is part of a sitting room. It isn't as warm as an extension, but is comfortable.

We use ours all year round, it would definitely not meet any modern day building regs and the roof is that super cheap polycarbonate stuff!
We find it bearable in the winter as there is a huge, new radiator in there and the adjoining room is a warm room so by the evening it’s generally pretty cosy in there.
Rain is an issue but as a family we don’t watch much tv so generally isn’t a problem.

It can get too hot but only when we have a very hot summer and generally we’re outside then anyway! It’s cool by the evening so only unusable in the afternoon.

I'm not sure why ours is the way it is? My db has an almost identical one and his is unbearable for most of the year!

We dont find the rain loud in ours, ours is glass I wonder if that makes the difference?

Presumably yours doesnt meet building regs then?

Ours was already double glazed glass all round, so not plastic, but we upgraded to modern reflective solar glass in ours for £6k. A solid roof would have been 18k.

It has transformed the space. It doesn't get very hot in summer, nor very cold in winter. Even this year, you could sit in it all summer. We have rads in the winter and an oil filled extra rad, but DH can now watch TV in there all year round.

It was granted planning permission when it was built.

PP is not the same as building regs

Although who knows if it met building regs at the time

Oooh, could you tell us more please? I have a south-facing conservatory and while I like the heat, it does get a bit much, but I don't want to lose the light. I love lying down and watching the rain.

You need to be able to shut the conservatory off from the rest of the house at times of extreme temperatures and to meet building regs. The conservatory shown looks massive and it will be either too cold or too hot. I replaced the roof on my conservatory some years back with in an insulated rubber roof. The average temperature during the day in the winter in my conservatory is around 11-13 without any heating. I do have a radiator in there which warms it up - but there are days when it's just too cold! In the summer I have seen as high as 39. Personally I would not rely on a conservatory as liveable space all year around.

The clue is in the name. Conservatory is not supposed to be a liveable room all year round. Hence the building regs requirement to split it off from the main living space.

If you use it all year round as a living space, then you are not using it for what it is designed for. Hence, you may find living conditions in it unpleasant, or expensive to maintain if you want to make them pleasant.

Mine has a polycarbonate roof. Long term we will replace it with a proper extension, but no funds to do that immediately. I'll be replacing the polycarbonate with a higher grade tinted version soon to get us through the next few years.
We had blinds when we moved in but they were filthy and full of files so I removed them. External shading in the summer is more effective than internal so I have trellis and plants outside on the east side where we get the most sun, it has helped. My new polycarbonate will be the higher grade multiwall solar blocking type and I think that'll be even better. I know some people who just sling a tarp or shade cloth over the top in summer to block out the heat, pretty sure you can get custom tarps made to fit perfectly, but these cost about as much as my new poly will be so I'm not doing that.
Mine actually isn't that cold in the winter so I use a little portable oil filled radiator and a massive rug on the floor. Curtains would help but are tricky as the structure can't take much weight so my plan is to add a wooden frame inside the windows and attach curtain rails to that for very thick curtains. And I use a heated throw.
All inexpensive solutions as I won't be keeping it long term.

Put a roof on it (the lightweight insulated ones) put underfloor heating in so it's warm in winter

Yes we do the same , door into the conservatory from frost room is shut when it's cold or boiling.

I'd also be interested in the price of putting a proper roof on.

**front not frost 🤣

I priced up a solid roof for mine, but it was out of my budget, so I'm DIYing it! I’ve insulated each panel with the silver bubble type stuff you use on camper vans, secured with high temp spray adhesive. Had that up almost a year now, as I wanted to make sure it held up and made enough difference before finishing the job, and it’s made a huge difference to the temperature both in the summer and winter. I’m now going to cover the whole ceiling with tongue and groove PVC cladding. I’ve also fitted floor to ceiling thermal curtains. It’s definitely made it a useable room year round.

We have south west facing conservatory. Ridiculously hot in summer, frozen (literally) in winter.

We couldn’t afford to tile the roof, but we had the inside professionally insulated and boarded out and spotlights fitted. It’s about 6m x 4m and it cost just under £4k.

The difference is unbelievable. We can now use it most of the year. On the heat wave days this year (red/amber) we’ve had to close the blinds and air the room morning and night, but that is no difference to the other south west facing rooms in the house.

Best money I’ve spent in a long time.

Ooh leopard,read with interest! DH tried to make something for ours,we had a new glass roof, blue tinge,pilkington special glass,8 years old it cost £13k,so it has to stay. Hoping someone on here will tell us how much their solid roof cost.. neighbours had one like ours and the picture, now it's low flat,glass fibre, makes the space opressive and so dark. It's not tiles. No idea how much it cost.

We have a pilkington glass roof too, would change it in a heart beat if possible. The sodding thing was meant to be easy to clean too, it's flipping not 🙄

Surely that depends though, ours is a living space all year round, its comfortable and adds another reception room for us. Im not sure why people make these blanket statements like this