Ventilation and condensation tips!

[Matthew]

As you guessed lots going in our house at the moment. Its been getting significantly colder over the last few days. We havent used our conservatory much because we havent yet put any rads in there. At the moment the conservatory is cold and predictably I had noticed a lot of condensation. Obviously the rads will help heat the place up but do I also need ventilation? At the moment once the conservatory doors are closed there is none. I was going to replace the knackered wood frame windows at the back of the house with UPVC at some point and wondered whether I should also add some extra ventilation between the house and the conservatory?

Thanks, Matthew

[Christian McArdle]

You always need ventilation for a room. The differences are how much and of what type. The best method is to entirely seal the room and then add back ventilation in a controlled fashion. This approach is known as "seal tight, ventilate right". Ventilation could be something as simple as a few vents, or as complex as an entire house ducted heat recovery system tied into the air conditioning and heating.

For the conservatory, an adjustable vent plate is probably more likely.

Christian.

[dg]

You can't ventilate a conservatory from an internal room - in effect you are just allowing stale/moist air into the conservatory.

Either fit some trickle vents, or open a window to the first notch on the catch - ie the night vent position.

All new windows (including conservatory frames) should have prefitted trickle vents

dg