Heating a Conservatory ?

sillygoose

as a note, I personally would never leave a fan heater on a timer (or even running unattended for any length of time)

Its sods law that one day someone would put something down infront of the fan heater while its off, intending to move it in just a moment, then the phone rings or the doorbell... in the morning you could be sifting through the ashes of your house!

economiser

A heavily glazed conservatory is always going to have a high heat loss and therefore will be expensive to heat. Obviously it depends on its size. We have to keep ours (5m x 4m) at a minimum of 10C because it is used mainly for non hardy plants. It is double glazed and we have blinds which add a bit of insulation and it faces south-west so benefits from such solar heating as is available. We keep the door open as far as possible during the day to use heat from our sitting room which has gas CH. At night or when we are out we rely on an thermostat controlled electric 2kW heater on economy 7. I don't know how much energy we use but I suspect it is quite a lot but then the plants are my OH's hobby, and there are worse vices.

globalds

I would not put anything in front of the radiator.
Let the air circulate.And make sure it is bled and pushing out plenty of heat.
Secondly you need to do as much as possible to insulate the area.To try and slow down the loss of heat.
I have seen blinds that are specially cut for conservatories and include the roof .
Also I don't know if there is any insulation in the lower panels.Probably not much.The sofa might go against one of these areas that would insulate that area ,as for the other areas I can't think what you could use.
What you are trying to create is a kind of thermal barrier that will stop any warm air from coming into contact with the cold surfaces like the glass.

rev229

We have the same problem too hot in summer too cold in winter. we have a double radiator but it makes no difference. We use the room as an occasional dining room. To warm it up we leave the doors to the playroom open and put on a fan heater, after about an hour it is ok. By the time the family have all piled in it is warm enough. We have blinds on the windows but not roof. Personally if we where going to extend the house again I would make it into a proper room with a proper roof rather that a conservatory. It is hardly ever used as we have a kitchen diner.

27col

As has been pointed out, a conservatory is not classified as a habitable room. If it were, it would be built with an adequate level of insulation. If people insist on trying to use them as habitable rooms in the winter, they are on a loser all the way. No amount of auxiliary heating is going to make them comfortable without a considerable cost implication. The moment the heating goes off the temperature in the room will plummet. This means that they will have to be heated all the time that they are in use to keep them comfortable. I think that people do not want to accept that they have serious limitations as to their usage.

Buffythedebtslayer

thanks again, tried the fan heater , which worked well and will make some curtains to go along the two sides- to cover the windows, plus shift the furniture around a bit(noticed that the sideboard itself was very warm!!).

cheers
Buffy.

Raksha

If you have a radiator and assuming it's on, it's silly to be heating the sideboard, so move that. If you need auxilary heating, assuming you have good ventilation, we use a portable gas heater in our conservatory.

flea72

our conservatory is our main living room, so shivering in the cold, isnt an option for me. We have extended our gas central heating system out there, but it has required a substantially sized radiator to be able to heat the room to a temp im happy with. We also only have glass on two sides, the third side is standard brick/block construction (which may help stop heat loss)

we currently only have vertical blinds at the windows/doors, and none on the roof (however we may get some, when finances allow)

Our gas bills havent increased within the last year, so im assuming that heating the conservatory hasnt cost that much, so heat loss cant be that great

hth Flea

Mustang

What about a dehumidifier in there as well. If you've got ice on the inside, it sounds damp. Heating dry air is much easier than 'damp' air.

McKneff

Raksha, we are considering a portable gas heater, do you find that they cause a lot of condensation. We have been told that they do