Rather than having all the hassle of having solar panels installed on the roof of the house, does anyone know a company making panels that simply slide in, as replacements for the existing plastic roof panels on a conservatory? It's in a very sunny position.
DavidJ
Just one point - in our case the rules from the planning authority were that a conservatory had a transparent or translucent roof. That's going to be hard if you cover it with solar wossnames.
That may well explain why you don't see adverts everywhere for it.
Even if the local planners allow it the solar panels will not let any appreciable amount of light through. The conservatory would be pretty dark inside.
Last conservatory I had had mostly glass walls. Light no problem.
Planning is.
Andy
Possibly, but good light would still come via the windows on 3 sides.
As for local planners, they had no involvement when the conservatory was built fairly recently.
And the room beyond even darker. Neighbours have replaced their conservatoryish roof with felt and it's made the living room like a cave.
That would probably be because having a largely transparent roof, it's outside their purview. Cover the roof and it becomes an extension and they might suddenly develop an interest.
I'm not saying you shouldn't do it - just pointing out a potential pitfall.
But, would it penetrate to the room behind?
Which is why I had a conservatory built, rather than an extenion. A roofed extension would have required planning permission (and 2m deep foundations courtesy of a neighbour's Willow). A conservatory needed none.
Colin Bignell
Yes, certainly something to try out first - sheets of black paper taped to the inside of the roof or something like that).
A rear extension had been built on the back of our old house. 3 bed semi
- the existing room only had windows where the extension went. And the extension had full height glass at the end , a glass block 'window' on one wall. It did make the 'inside' room a bit dingy, and meant that you needed lights on all the time.
also, if you think it gets hot in the conservatory in summer now, you could prolly roast a whole side of a pig in it if you had solar panels in place of the top glass panels,
solar panels get extremely hot, and yes i am talking about PV panels, tho the hot water ones get as hot too,
i have 3 x 125 watt panels on the roof of my motorhome, first one was stuck directly to the roof, i.e. the frame attatched to the roof, i could feel inside where the panel was due to the heat radiating thru the alli outer skin, 1 inch styrine insulation and ply inner skin, when i took that panel off to move it and fit it properly (on stand off legs so air flow can get under it and help cooling... and a cooler panel outputs more power too) the alli roof under the panel had been baked so much the paint had bubbled off and it was buckled to hell,
luckily i was moving the panel to add a roof window, so that bit of roof was chopped out,
If it's covered by permitted development, planners have no say. Building Control would be the ones to watch out for.
MBQ
Yeah - but my point is that it was probably only a permitted development by virtue of its translucent roof.
Hi, what can I use to keep my solar panels on a conservatory roof
The design details of your conservatory matter.
So does your planning permission. You may be required to keep a roof the light can get through.
Andy
If you put solar panels on the roof you may find it ceases to be a conservatory, which does not require any foundations, and becomes a house extension which does require proper foundations and has to conform to building and planning regs in other ways.
I guess the fact conservatories generally have no foundations means even if you get the panels to stay in place, it may suffer from settlement if you stick heavy solar panels on the roof....
Dave
I think that the requirement for 3/4 or more of the roof to be transparent or translucent was removed some years ago - hence the trend for replacing roofs with insulating panels.
I think that it was removed specifically to improve energy efficiency.
A lot of conservatories have dwarf walls and they do have foundations - just not as deep as required for a proper extension. My own has concrete strip foundations, with Engineering brick on top. Above ground, the outer leaf is brick, while the inner is block, with Rockwool batts for cavity insulation.
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