Hi, moved into a new house early in the year and this one has a conservatory. Now it’s starting to get cold (!), it’s cold in the conservatory so not getting as used as much. It has a 1000mm x 400mm single radiator in there but not really making much difference in there.
Thought about upping the size of the rad in length and into a double rad. Anything else I can do though?

It is a heat sink no matter what you do. A bigger rad will just honk your money in to a big cold space and cost you a packet.

There probably isn’t much you can do other than spending money trying to heat it. Is it an old one? Tiled floor as well? Double glazed at least?

Don’t use it in winter. Simples 🙂

As above, it’s all that glass fortunately it’ll be a joy to use in the summer, except on the sunny days when it’ll become too hot.
Is it not possible to isolate it from the rest of the house?
Look at the glass to see what you can do there, double glaze? Insulated blinds?

im sat nice warm and watching tv in mine 4x3m,before i built it i made sure that i could use it by insulating the walls and floor argon filled glass and blinds on all the glass and its south facing.
if its all glass and timber made you have no chance

My conservatory has a polycarbonate roof and was very cold.

So i recently had the roof insulated with those rigid foil backed loft insulations panels, put inbetween the rafters, as my conservatory is a lean -to design. they hold themselves in place, i wallpapered over them so the ceiling now looks like any other ceiling in the house.

It has made a massive difference and the room is now almost as warm as the rest of the house.

I used to have an oil filled radiator left on all the time which worked quite well too.

Do you have blinds on the windows? i keep most of them down in the winter, except on the doors and two windows, keeps draughts out too.

wish i had a pound for every time i ve been asked this.. the simple answer is conservatories have virtually zero insulation and thus leak heat.
many attempt to add rads increase the size of rads etc etc but unless you use a number of non cost effective solutions then you ll be throwing good money after bad.
firstly building regs state that connies should have a door seperating them from the main house ( patio dor stlye been the most common and the same regs state that any heating in the connie should have its own specific controls ( zone valves etc) to date i ve only come across two that have met both regs!!

if it were me i would have 2 electric panel radiators in the connie for background heat when in use during the winter and only use the conservatory infrequently..

Thanks for your replies. It is double glazed and about 4 or 5 courses of bricks. Not south facing though, so doesn’t get a lot of sun at all. Some in the morning and that’s it.
Did think about blinds but wasn’t sure if that would have any effect.

Really thick floor insulation, roof blinds, the reflective ones, thick curtains,couple of oil filed radiators.

Thank you totalshell. The conservatory doesn’t have it’s own thermostat, it’s on with the house (no surprise there then). There is a door to the house but it’s rather flimsy. I have bought a nice door to be fitted in there but my chippy mate crashed his bike and broke his collarbone!

Also dont forget if you switch of the radiator, its still ful of water, and if if it gets cold may well freeze.

Also dont forget window locks on the windows and any roof light,

i had thermal backed roller blinds originally, but they curled in the heat of summer and looked naff.
now i have normal roller blinds from Homebase on the windows, much cheaper than special conservatory ones.

Also, my conservatory is hardwood, (with a dwarf wall) not plastic, so it shows is possible to warm it up.

Did think about blinds but wasn’t sure if that would have any effect.

For effective blinds, I’m talking about something like shutters, to have any real effect they’d need to be insulated, fitted and external. Unfortunately it’s difficult to do on a conservatory
But well fitted internal fabric blinds or curtains will help a little and make it a bit more bearable under the summer sun.
The second problem your getting if it doesn’t catch the sun is that it doesn’t warm up during the day, a bit of a double whammy.

Got underfloor heating working off the boiler in mine; fantastic!
Must waste quite a lot of heat (10 glass panels in roof so blinds not a goer) but if the sun comes out it also pumps heat into the house!

Must waste quite a lot of heat (10 glass panels in roof so blinds not a goer) but if the sun comes out it also pumps heat into the house!

Not much sun this time of night. 😉

Our conservatory is about 3×4 with a polycarbonate roof. We have a single mid-sized electric convector heater. It has a timer set for the main time of day that the space is used. It may not be super efficient but is plenty warm enough for the times we need it to be. My wife uses it during the week with the kids leaving the heating off in the rest of the house.

Even during last winter’s cold spell it was plenty warm enough while the heater was on.

keeps draughts out too.

keeps prying eyes out too.