New climate change rules threaten new build conservatories..... Featured

ha ha what next...tee hee

I had a conservatory in Southern France that had 'unwanted solar gain'. I simply replaced the roof panels with ones that had a heat shield* built, which solved the problem. You can also now build conservatories in the UK with a solid roof, which was previously not allowed.

• perforated metal foil inside the cavities in the polycarbonate.

thus probably cutting off the required daylight to the inner room...

what next

Given we tend to need to heat our homes more often than cooling them and, previously it wasn?t unusual to see ?green houses? built with large conservatories or sun rooms designed to warm air ( even in cooler weather) for circulating around the house, this seems a strange move.

We had a double glazed sun room / conservatory in a previous house. It could be surprisingly ward on a cold but sunny winter day.

Part L (2006 version) already 'outlawed' the practice where people would install a conservatory and then remove the original patio doors of the house to make the conservatory a 'habitable' room.

A rather contradictory thing to do though. Just don't attach a conservatory to a south facing wall and you should be ok.

The conservatory came with the house.

Ours faces East, so not too bad, but we added it because we have three children and only a hallway, small kitchen and a through living room downstairs, so we needed an extra "room" quickly and cheaply (it was both because I bought a second-hand conservatory - only a couple of years old, but the owner had upgraded to a larger one - and I did all the work myself).

As ours was added specifically for extra space and could only go on one wall (it's a semi, with a driveway at one side), it wouldn't have mattered which way it faced, we'd still have installed it - needs must.

It now serves as the computer room for two of our children, a dining room for the family and also has the cupboard housing our home server.