any feed back or advice on a consevatory?

mvteng

Problems my fried encountered with her cheap conservatory :

1/ Glass used was not toughened!!
2/ It leaks
3/ Doors don't really operate well.
4/ No completion certificate / building warrant / paperwork whatsoever.
5/ They were not even slightly interested in coming out to fix the problems.
6/ Took a lot longer than they said it would. Many days taken of work & they just didn't turn up.
7/ Impossible to contact / communicate with.

This is what you would perceive to be a fairly large company in Edinburgh i.e. adverts on local radio, etc.

When she told us what her quote was, it immediately just seemed way too cheap. I think now she would happily have spent an extra couple of thousand if these problems hadn't happened.

Concerning the points raised by fluffymuffy, we had a similar proposal to what you want & did indeed need planning permission & a building warrant, however heat loss calculation wasn't mentioned or required (perhaps thats come into play in the last 2 years?) however our local council were greatly concerned with the ratio of windows to floorspace. I guess maybe each local council has their own bugbears.

gfrdl

We have had our conservatory for 1 year now - a building separated from the house by doors etc. I agree with everyone above that in the winter the heat loss would be massive in a conservatory open to the house rooms/kitchen etc.
When the outside temperatures and sun are right we are absolutely delighted with it. We ate evening meals in it just about every day over summer. But there are many days when it is not usable as it is too cold when the outside temperature is low.
We have electric underfloor heating but wish that we had thicker insulation boards on top of the concrete, as it takes so long to heat up. The heating is effectively heating the concrete before the room. Heating is only used in winter.
We had local builders on personal recommendation they were great and did not want a penny until completion.
Neighbours had a conservatory build at the same time - builders from Yellow Pages - absolute chaos. The building was coming away from their house by the time it was finished. They had to get Trading Standards in before final payment. This created an ongoing feeling of dissatisfaction for them.
Would we do the same again - Yes, at 1 year on anyway. We recommend better insulation under the tiles/on top of concrete base to maximise efficiency of underfloor electric heating.

peediedj

we spent over 12 months considering a conservatory ,got prices from 4 compaines for it fully built,cheapest was £16k,dearest £22k,eventually i bought a self build one from conservatoryland for £5500,got a local builder(who comes into my work) to build it for £3000,and got materials for founds,dwarf wal letc from my work for under £2000,so whole thing built has cost me under £11k,quality of the conservatory is superb,no cheap rubbish here,and although got a slight leak its easily repaired