[Closed] Are conservatories cold in the winter?

Ours bloody is! As is my Dads, although his is usable if the radiator is on and a fan heater has been running a while. As soon as there's any sun it heats up fast though.

Yes. I think it might be in the building regs... but if not make sure there are external quality doors between the rest of the house and the conservatory. That way you can shut off the cold conservatory from the rest of the house.

Conversely you can also shut off the baking hot conservatory from the rest of the house in the summer and keep the house cooler.

I would seriously reconsider having no doors.
They do get cold in winter and that cold will come into the rest of the house. It'll be like having the front door open.
That said, with walls on either side it might not be so bad.

In the height of winter we find we have to turn the radiators on for a little bit before we can use ours but not for long.

In summer they get incredibly hot. In fact, if there's any sun they get incredibly hot. Make sure you have some ventilation built in.

Mines freezing in the winter, and bloody hot in the summer.

No doors! You're insane.

They are absolutely sodding freezing in the winter, because they have a lot of glass but also no curtains.

And they are also absoutely sodding boiling in the summer, so you end up with blinds all over the place. In autumn and spring, and in less than great summer weather, they go from boiling when the sun's out to freezing when it's in pretty quickly. This is even worse cos you can't even account for it.

So all in all, fairly pointless imo 🙂 I've never come across one that was a useful room in a house. We had one in a rental house, a nicely made one, but it was off the back of a large living room. So we just sat in there, you had to make a real effort to sit in the conservatory.

It will be cold and if you aren't keeping the external doors it requires building regs which it won't meet because of the thermal element.

We rented a house which had a full width conservatory, full height walls either side and dwarf wall to the garden and it was v. cold in winter. Underfloor heating made it useable but was expensive so we only used to use it when we needed the extra space because of visitors.

I don't think you are 'allowed' to have them open to the house without exterior quality doors unless it complies with certain insulation requirements. My mother-in-law has one open to the hallway and it really is cold.

I'd also try and get a proper roof on it (even if its a conservatory style solid roof) to reduce overheating in the summer)

Mt eldest is sleeping in ours whilst the extension with his bedroom is built - he goes to bed looking like a polar explorer, so am guessing they do get a bit cold!!!

IME they are a bit of a compromise.

As most have said freezing in the winter and red hot in the summer.

If you can get planning spend the extra and build a proper extension.

The extra cost will be covered by your fuel bills over time and it will be a lot more useful.

If you go for a conservatory then definitely put doors between it and the house.

Don't waste your money, make it a "sunroom" instead with a proper roof, we can never use ours due to it being too cold so plans are afoot to convert it. Oh and ...no doors? you're making a big mistake there

As above- we've got a similar size to yours but with a solid wall down one side.
The comments about a dividing door are deffo right- ours can be very cold in winter unless the hearings on, and very warm in summer. There's no way I would have an open space- it's also nice to close the door and escape the noise of the house too sometimes!
We have 2 good sized rads as well- one at either end.

Cold in winter-too hot in summer. A condensation trap for 4 months of the year, if it's anything like ours. (and noisy) Just had a warm roof put on ours after 4 years of damp, condensation and worry. About the same size as yours. Quotes varied from 4-8 thousand Best thing I ever did.

agree with everything said above (and have to plumbed in big radiators).
All bar peak of summer it closed off to the lounge.

We put a 6 by 4 metre conservatory on the back of the house just over a year ago. The solar reflective glass on the roof is great. It definitely makes a big difference during the summer. The old conservatory with triple wall polycarb roofing got hot enough to melt all the candles one afternoon. I think not having a door will be a mistake. We designed ours around a 6 Kw Jotul wood burning stove. The heat from this makes this the most popular place in the house during the winter 8) Heating ours with the central heating is pitiful. Irrespective of how good the sales pitch about thermal properties is, you're basically throwing heat out into space.

D.

Ours has a wooden roof with some form of insulation and non-full-height windows. It is freezing in spite of having two radiators. It has doors to block it off from the rest of the house, but it still acts as a heat sink - the adjoining kitchen is made much colder than it would otherwise be!

Thanks all for your comments. . I recon that's resolved it. . For the money it does not seem at all worth it. . Maybe spend the extra cash and get a proper extension!

I've rented 3 places with conservatories, and they've all been exactly the same, as above: in winter they were all about the same temperature as outdoors and in summer they felt like they were about 40 degrees. Very small seasonal windows of opportunity when you could actually comfortably spend time in them.
Good for storing stuff in but not much use for anything else IMO, although I expect if done properly and thoughtfully they might be OK.

Well we have underfloor heating (off the boiler)and eat all our meals there; it's toast even when there's snow outside (like now). We never close the doors to the house. It's only got one glass wall (2m by 3m)and roof is low-e double glazed 6-12-6.4.
We might waste a bit of energy but the difference in our quality of life having all that extra light in the scottish winter can't be understated.
In summer it's toast and we love it (no blinds or tinted glass); we just have to remember not to leave the butter dish in there!

Yeah, hang on. Our conservatory is by far our favourite room in the house. Yes, it needs a bit of heating in winter and perhaps some windows open in summer but if you get it built properly with at least one full sold wall, they can be great rooms. Ours has one full length wall and one half wall,

I do think these help in making it a normal room.

Right, we just had a proper sun room extension built last year, c8m x 5m with vaulted ceiling c 4.5m high, so I researched this quite a bit (including seeking advice from the stw massive).

Some people have all year round useable conservatories but far too many say they're too cold or too hot alot of the time. So I'd suggest a proper roof with extra insulation over and above building regs, enough veluxes as you need, decent sized windows and a nice tri fold door with all glazing to A rating. extra insulation to the floor and then connect to your existing heating with sufficient rads not to struggle to heat the space. Job's a good 'un. Only thing I'd change would be grounbd source heating but that wasn't doable and maybe a wood burning stove when money's no object 😉

I think B Regs will require doors to connect OR you can increase spec of insulations elsewhere through the house to compensate so that the new property has a lower U value than the old - sounds hard but isn't really - the web has everything you need and to do the calcs and spec the build or seek a competent person to draw up your B Regs application.

A Conservatory is a great asset to any house if its placed on the right aspect. West facing is probably the best, mine is and how nice it was today when it hit a tad short of 20 degrees in summer it can get too hot if I forget to vent it but in winter and a radiator it never drops lower than 15 degrees in there.
Allows me to grow these :-0

[img] [/img]

The radiant heat you get from our underfloor heating (hydraulic as it's cheaper to run)is what makes our conservatory viable. The air temperature in there can be 15deg, yet we're still comfortable 'cos of the warmth around the feet.
PS. We chose underfloor as it was invisible to the building inspector (we weren't allowed to heat a "sun porch") 😈

Turbo trainers set up in ours at this time of year. Perfect whilst watching it snow...

flap_jack - Member

Turbo trainers set up in ours at this time of year. Perfect whilst watching it snow...

A client of mine had one, too hot in the summer, too cold in the winter until I put a false ceiling in it with insulation on top....overjoyed he was, bloody fantastic. He can use it all year round.

As mentioned above if you don't have external grade doors to the rest of the house it is not a conservatory but an extension, and as such must comply with building regs.

In addition to what ajc says above ref. doors between house and 'conservatory', you also need Building Regulations if it is heated by a heating system connected to the house.

No, they can usually afford to keep the heating on all the time....

What? Oh! Sorry misread the title for conservative...

IGMC

Even if you make it the perfect temperature all year - what's it for? You already have a living room, don't you? That's the question I've always had. Extensions should be to create space for a real purpose imo. Say you need another bedroom, or a room for hobbies or something.

What Psling said - will now come under building regulations as you are heating it.

From memory on the heating side you either need to have doors between it and the adjoining room or a totally separate heating zone with its own time and temperature control. TRV on rads does not comply.

From memory on the heating side you either need to have doors between it and the adjoining room or a totally separate heating zone with its own time and temperature control. TRV on rads does not comply

Both required.

Not sure what my folks did with theirs which they had built last summer.

But over Christmas the family spent most of the time out there, it was lovely. Probably the nicest room in the house.

Heater seemed pretty pokey, and I think they spent quite a bit.

Whilst looking for a house I found conservatories a big turn off. I see them as Gods waiting room for old folk. imo.

That'll be my folks then

Use mine all year round. We've knocked out windows and door way from kitchen to it and use it as dining room now. Old dining room now an office and sewing room (for the Mrs...not me!!) We put a decent sized radiator in there and keeps the place usable during the winter and plenty of windows to open in the summer. East facing so warms up nicely in the morning 🙂

tbh Build a proper extension. More usable and properly insulated.

When we bought our last house (February), the very next day a plumber pal came around and spur-d a rad off the dining room into the conservatory. In winter though you still didn't want the door from the kitchen open really.

And in summer we had to leave the outer doors open all day, after the TV (casing) melted...

I use mine all year. It's open to our kitchen and we eat in the every single day. We just treat it as a normal room.

My sister-in-law has just had a large UPVC conservatory added to the back of their house. They asked me for my opinion. I should have lied but I didn't so I'm not sure she was too pleased.

You should really be looking on a conservatory as an extension to your garden than to your house.

Nope..

They keep warm by burning the corpses of the poor and needy on their roaring hearth's while braying loudly on and on about the scrounging classes..

we bought a house with a conservatory, it was crap, seperated by old aluminium sliding door, ugh. for 2 years we used it as a storage room for bikes 🙂 then we decided to make it part of the living room. We took out the alu doors and put oak floor down in the liounge and out to the conservatory so it felt like the same room, we put in two radiators and some ceiling blinds, we then fitted oak dividing doors that are double glazed. We thought we'd have them to seperate the rooms so i can use the conservatory as an office, but also to close off the cold if needed. The radiators are big jobbies specified for a cold conservatory.

The result works well and we often dont close the doors between the rooms, we have thick curtains there too. The next thing I need to sort is to put some insulation on the underside of the doors, its not essential and I'm only doing it cos I think it should be an air tight divider.

Same as most things-pay a bit more money for a glass roof & top quality glazing & it is viable. The heat reflecting roof means we don't need roof blinds but we have window blinds for privacy & "cosiness" when dark. We use ours most of the year & spend most of our summer evenings & weekend days in it due to the lovely feeling of light & space you get. We also use it as a dining area. During really cold spells it probably isn't worth heating. It has never had any internal condensation. 5x3 is a good size and we have a patio door between it & the house.

My parents had one built a couple of years ago. 6x4. Heat reflective glass, the works.

Total waste of money, they hardly use it, well my mum has never used it as she doesn't like the smell of the custom made wicker seating that cost a fortune 🙄

The flooring (big floor tiles) gets condensation on it under the furniture.

It's too cold in the winter, too hot in the summer. They use a fan heater which has a frost setting, to keep it above freezing in the winter. As you can imagine its going off all the time at the moment. And a big expensive electric/oil heater thing (which admittedly does a good job)

They ignored me when I said they should fit a wood burner and/or underfloor heating when it was being built.

So, my advice to you? Don't get one, if you need the space build an extension or save the money for a house move. If you do insist on going for one then think of heating and air con for the summer

We just use ours as a fridge for about 4 months a year. Left the original outside door on the house when it was built, correct decision IMO- keeps the cold out and retains some security (the conservatory's locks are terrible, and attached to a flimsy frame in a building made out of glass- rock solid)

We movd into our new new house mid december and that has one, dwarf walls, all glass walls and reflective glass roof. We get sun from late morning until the end of the day.

Its been baltic since we moved in. So cold infact that i broke the door handle trying to lock the door in the night after letting the dog out. We're in two minds about what to do with it. Build a proper extension where it is and open the kitchen up or change the design a bit. We have started looking into putting a different roof on it. Its basically a plastic solid insulated roof with mock tile effect roof (sounds great when you put it like that!!) with a couple of sky lights. Have been told they make the room much warmer. Might be worth a look.

skiprat

Same as ours, but as I said first thing we did was spur a rad off the house. Keeps it above freezing.

I don't think you are 'allowed' to have them open to the house without exterior quality doors unless it complies with certain insulation requirements.

It is also open-plan - we orinally planned concertina doors in the opening but during the build decided we wanted it open so we went back to the planning office and they approved it on the basis that we had to fit DG with some special gas in it. Obviously this was more expensive than standard DG but it was cheaper than the doors we were going to fit.

And we are very relieved we didn't do the conservatory as it remains perfectly warm in winter and not too hot in the summer.

Here's a pic...
[img] [/img]

I know someone who had a large conservatory built - it cut out most the light making the lounge dark and gloomy. They ended up having 2 new windows fitted to get some light into the room.

We inherited on when we moved into our current house. It's a good quality one - dwarf walls, hardwood frame and reflective glazing all round.

We set it up as a the kids playroom.

When we get enough cash saved up, we're going to knock it down and build a proper extension. It's too cold in winter and an oven in summer (south facing). Prior to owning one, I'd always quite fancied the idea. Not now though.

Grandparnts have two, one's got a propper roof and no door to the house though so that's probably proerly insulated.

They use them all year round so must be warm enough. They do live in a large, but fairly dark cottage though so it's appealing compared to the living room in anything but freezing weather/rain.

They're also really good gardeners. Not just a lawn and borders, there must be hundreds/thousands of plants, a pond, couple of sumemr houses, chicken hutch (with chickens) dovecote etc and a view out into the mountains. So the conservatory is actualy somewhere you can enjoy that on a less than brilliant day.

A client of mine had one, too hot in the summer, too cold in the winter until I put a false ceiling in it with insulation on top....overjoyed he was, bloody fantastic. He can use it all year round.

Did this to my conservatory too. We use it everyday, it is the kids/music room.

you're all thinking about it wrong. In winter they are in fact a giant walk in fridge. And as such a great place to keep yer booze.