Please talk to me Conservatory Vs Extension?

[beautifulgirls]

We want to extend our kitchen so we can make a through kitchen/diner. If we go for a conservatory type extension how warm/cold it is going to be? How effective will a radiator be vs underfloor heating? Should we scrap the idea even though a conservatory looks nice and consider an extension with proper roof instead?

you could always have a mixture of them both (sort of) - back wall a big folding glass door, or a glass wall, glass roof , BIG windows etc. I would go extension though as conservatories are hard to get right with the hot/cold thing, and just generally always looking abit tired.

I have a conservatory open to the kitchen that we use as an eating space. It is lovely, but if I had the choice again I would do an extension with lots of glass rather than a conservatory.

It can sometime be hard to get planning permission to open your main living area in to a conservatory because it isn't energy efficient enough. You often have to have a door between your main house and the conservatory. If you want open plan, an extension would be much better - easier to regulate temperature/light and more secure, too.

You can get glass domes or veluxes to let lots of light in to an extension.

We are about to knock down a conservatory that leads off our kitchen (was here when we moved in) and replace it with a proper extension to the kitchen with lots of glass.

The conservatory is unusable at the moment as the sun is on that side most of the day. It is soooo hot and sunny we need to wear sunglasses and hats to breakfast. I hate hate hate it!

Our new extension will have a glass skylight as well as a wall of glass doors opening to the garden and some side windows so the light will be lovely but without the heat of the conservatory.

Basically what IlanaK said (except we haven't got the ££ to replace ours ATM)

Our conservatory is on the W side of the house, so the sun is shining in the side of it from about noon, in the summer it gets ridiculously hot! In fact, too hot to go into the kitchen to cook dinner

And in the winter it is so cold you have to put on loads of layers to have breakfast...

I would definitely vote for the proper extension.

Thanks everyone - I think after discussion and your input we are going to speak to some builders and see what we can do for an extension with lots of light but less of the cold in winter issues. Summer bothers me less, but there is a limit there too!