Conservatory.....

[Karma]

Any thoughts on them?

Are they worth the money?  or do they really just become very expensive greenhouses?

Any ideas on the costs involved.  Looking around the net it seems like they cost from around £5000 fully installed but can cost thousands more!

[Steve (VapeStorm)]

We had one built years ago its lovely all year round ill post some pics for you Karma just need to charge battery on tablet a touch

[Greg]

Karma I'd say get a good one, don't go cheap or as you say it will be a glorified greenhouse in summer and a cold frame in winter

Go with a dwarf wall too and personally I'd go with a tiled roof rather than Perspex of glass but then it's a garden room rather than a conservatory

[Greg]

Big is good too

[dinamic22]

Ours is just a cat room she is the only one that uses it, it is too warm in summer even though we had air con installed it just cannot cope with the extreme heat & too cold in winter as all the heat goes out of the roof.
Ours has a dwarf wall it cost us £6,000 in 2005, the best thing about it is added security at the back of the house.

[chrisjw]

Definitely with a dwarf wall........The perspex/glass roof is great for the summer/when it's hot/sunny, but then, Him upstairs apparently forgot this country when it came to that & as said, it'll lose heat in the winter......with a slated roof, it really just becomes an extension.

[dave]

We debated this one a few years ago and if you want a good quality one plus some form of heating (asuming you want to use it all year) they don't come cheap. In the end we decided on having an extension built and we have been delighted with that. The difference in cost was not all that much

[Perpetua]

Stop buying handbags . . . and get one Karma.


They're a lovely multi-functional space. Proper conservatory blinds are a must I think . . . and have some heating installed in it.

[Steve (VapeStorm)]

[300]

Lovely in spring / summer, not bad in Autumn & too expensive to heat in Winter. We shut the door on ours for Winter & just use it as a boot room.

My advice is an extension with fully insulated roof, flat or pitched & glass all round, then you'll have a room for ALL seasons that doesn't cost a fortune to keep at a comfortable temperature. That's what i plan for ours when it fails, trouble is i've been waiting 15 years for it to spring a leak & i knew after the first hard Winter that it was a mistake.

Ours faces North West & catches the afternoon / late evening sun (on the odd occasion we have any), that's great in summer first thing in the morning for a cool place to sup your coffee & munch your cereal but the rest of the year early mornings are positively chilly. The direction your conservatory faces will most likely determine how much you actually end up using it.

Rainfall on the roof can be a PITA too, it gets so loud sometimes it's impossible to hold a conversation. Thermal blinds are another PITA, they help control extremes of temperature (a little), but you've got to be cleaning them all the time or they start smelling musty & show signs of mildew, ours ended up at the local dump after just a few years service.

Not trying to put you off, but unless you've got a South facing wall to bolt your conservatory to i personally wouldn't consider one. I'm sure there's plenty here that love their conservatories & hopefully they'll comment & balance out all my negativity towards a conservatory.

[Karma]

That looks nice Steve. Not sure I can afford one as grand as your picture Greg

I started out thinking about getting a porch then thought, hey, might as well get a conservatory. I would definitely want blinds as I like my privacy and I'd like to use it as a dining room.

Thanks for all your responses

[Karma]

Some fair points there 300. If it wasn't usable I'd be as well with my original idea of a porch for my boots

[Deleted]

Go Cheap and get Perpetua to build a shed with a window and then buy a deck chair plus a radio. Once it's built open up deck chair in the summer and search hand bags on your laptop with the money you have left over and in the winter fold up chair and then sit down by your open fire (if you have one ) with your laptop on your knee to continue searching for even more bags but only if you must.

Now thinking it might be a bad idea as you will need a conservatory to put all your handbags in it.

other option would of been a massive cardboard box with cut outs for windows or if your into your lego then you too can have a lego house.

Sorry Karma not much help

[Steve (VapeStorm)]

Mar 29, 2014 16:06:52 GMT Karma said:

Some fair points there 300. If it wasn't usable I'd be as well with my original idea of a porch for my boots

From what I hear you need a porch the size of a conservatory to keep all your shoes!

on another note ours is south facing im sat in it now the suns just dipped behind the trees and its fairly warm. Yes when it rains hard it sounds like hailstones and when I hails it sounds like your under attack lol. But if you have a nkce garden to look out over its definitely worth having

[decoy]

the roofs on these thing become brittle with age(my mum and dads did)so be careful on what roof you get as you want it to last more than 10 years and yep they ruddy cold in winter n hot in summer. just think of the woman cave (shed) you could build for the same pennies and you get to take it with you when you move