Hi everyone,
I have recently moved into a property that has a 4m square conservatory with a poly-carbonate roof.
The flooring is concrete with laminate wood on top. The room has no radiators and as you can well imagine is rather cold.
For the last 2 weeks I have been looking at various options to make the room usable all year around. I have found a number of methods (not necessarily cheap or efficient) that may work and would ideally like peoples thoughts, experience with said methods:
Firstly the roof. I have seen a number of companies that can come out and insulate the roof, install plasterboard and then skim over with plaster. This in principle sounds great, but in practice I wonder how effective it is and also (probably more importantly) what happens if and when the roof develops a leak? Not only would you not see it until it is too late but any repair work could be costly.
Would it or is it more effective to have the conservatory structure reinforced and replace the poly roof with glass - couple this with blinds or insulation?
Secondly the floor. I was thinking of replacing the floor and installing underfloor heating, not to heat the room but to just keep the floor warm? Having looked it would seem electric heating is easier to install than water and I believe the regs state the heating should be separate to the main houses heating system (could be wrong on that front).
Again any suggestions on how effective this really is?
Finally the overall heating of the room was going to be done via a wood burner. We had one in an extension in our previous house and ignoring the time taken to clean and set the fire up it heated the room well.
One thing I have noticed from the website which install wood burners in conservatories is the flue seems to extend out of the top by a good distance, anyone know why this is the case and if indeed it needs to be like this. The one in our extension didn't...
Given the associated costs with all of the above it might actually be cheaper to knock down the conservatory and build it out as an extension!
Thanks in advance for your advice, feedback and comments
TT
I have recently moved into a property that has a 4m square conservatory with a poly-carbonate roof.
The flooring is concrete with laminate wood on top. The room has no radiators and as you can well imagine is rather cold.
For the last 2 weeks I have been looking at various options to make the room usable all year around. I have found a number of methods (not necessarily cheap or efficient) that may work and would ideally like peoples thoughts, experience with said methods:
Firstly the roof. I have seen a number of companies that can come out and insulate the roof, install plasterboard and then skim over with plaster. This in principle sounds great, but in practice I wonder how effective it is and also (probably more importantly) what happens if and when the roof develops a leak? Not only would you not see it until it is too late but any repair work could be costly.
Would it or is it more effective to have the conservatory structure reinforced and replace the poly roof with glass - couple this with blinds or insulation?
Secondly the floor. I was thinking of replacing the floor and installing underfloor heating, not to heat the room but to just keep the floor warm? Having looked it would seem electric heating is easier to install than water and I believe the regs state the heating should be separate to the main houses heating system (could be wrong on that front).
Again any suggestions on how effective this really is?
Finally the overall heating of the room was going to be done via a wood burner. We had one in an extension in our previous house and ignoring the time taken to clean and set the fire up it heated the room well.
One thing I have noticed from the website which install wood burners in conservatories is the flue seems to extend out of the top by a good distance, anyone know why this is the case and if indeed it needs to be like this. The one in our extension didn't...
Given the associated costs with all of the above it might actually be cheaper to knock down the conservatory and build it out as an extension!
Thanks in advance for your advice, feedback and comments
TT
