Keeping a conservatory warm in winter

AdrianHi

The conservatory on our house has changed role to play room for my two boys.
Winter is approaching and I'm looking for ideas on how to make this "room" warm enough to be usable in winter. Take it as read putting jumpers and shoes on the kids is already part of the plan.
There is a radiator connected to the gas central heating system, but it's no where near enough on its own. We are planning on replacing the old thin lino with new lino (not carpet) something as thick and insulating as I can find.
Conservatory construction is brick wall to a 2ft height, double glazed windows all round then polycarbonate/perspex roof.
Trying to avoid measures like under floor heating or anything which will increase gas or electricity use.
Is solarstat any good http://www.solarstat.co.uk/layers.htm?
Is there any kind of blind that works well for the roof and possibly other windows that will still allow light in?
Any other suggestions?

Prepared to invest £100's to £1000+ on the project but probably want to stop short of re-building the roof, not sure the structure would take the weight of glass double glazing.

TIA

paceinternet

I would look at air source heat pumps to an indoor air handling unit. Looks like an air conditioning cooling unit, but can provide heat when needed, as well as cooling in summer.
1kw input will get you an average throughout winter of around 3kw output which should be good for an average conservatory, but get some sizing recommendations from suppliers. Running cost will then be roughly 12p per hour.

Solar solutions seem difficult to me for a day like today, where it is cool, wet and very cloudy. But it will be interesting to see what else is suggested.

moonrakerz

I have a 11' X 8' conservatory on the back of the house. I have no more than a 750/1250/2000W electric convector heater (£16 from Focus) which copes well. I leave the French widows into the conservatory open and find after a while when the heat from the main house has spread I can turn the heater off.

If you have kids playing on the floor there is only one thing to put on the floor:-

http://www.flotex.co.uk/pages/home/

It is easy to lay, it is warm and it is also very easy to keep clean. They will send you a sample.

JonathanA

Not sure if you can completely avoid increased energy costs. At our old house we had a 12ft x 10ft conservatory with a radiator - we topped it up with a convector heater when needed - like you, wearing jumpers and slippers etc whilst in there. We used the room all year round with no real problems. But, we had ours carpeted with a good quality underlay and thick carpet. Since we had that done when we built the conservatory, not sure what difference the carpet made, but we certainly liked it more than tiles / lino etc.

Now saving to have a conservatory on our new house - it may take a while, but we miss that one room more than we miss the entire old house!!

AdrianHi

Thanks all.
I'll take a closer look at Flotex.
Carpet seems like a good option but wife has a thing about avoiding carpet in areas where children might spill drinks and food :rolleyes:
We do have an oil filled electric radiator we have used on the odd occasion in the conservatory, still seems cold. I don't think the conservatory roof we have has very good insulating properties.

Air source pumps is an interesting one, I knew about ground source heat pumps but air source sounds much easier.
Would be a good option for my father in law heating a large farm house. He has a boiler shed attached to the outside of the house which gets warm, an air source heat pump in that shed to supplement what the oil boilers are doing and recycling their waste heat is an interesting idea.

alleycat`

Assuming you have blinds for the windows already(?) something I'm trying this year is putting a heat insulating curtain liner up between the blinds and the glass.

I've done this by putting up a curtain track behind the blind "runners".

When it gets better again the liner will come down and the track will remain pretty much unseen.

I'm not convinced it'll make a massive difference (polycarbonate roof and all that) but it wasn't expensive to do and it "feels" better even if its all in my mind

AdrianHi

Clean slate at the moment, no blinds or insulation measures of any kind.
If you know of any with good insulating properties that would be good to know :cool: