Conservatory Roof

jamie_128

What are my options.

Ive heard of lightweight roofs but for the size of the conservatory its about 6k which seems crazy for some lightweight tiles and a bit of plastering.

Wanting to use it as another room all year round, any other options, do glass roofs need better foundations? if not are they cheaper than a tiled roof and are they okay insulation wise?

petersdiy

Hi Jamie,

There are a number of roof systems on the market, tiled roofs are defiantly trendy at the moment and if you find the right company the price isn't too elevated. A great thing with having a tiled roof is that it normally transforms your conservatory into a room you can use all year round, which compared to a glass roof you maybe limited due to the heat in the summer and lack of insulation may leave it cold in the winter.

I would recommend a tiled roof as a long term investment which will defiantly pay off

jamie_128

Thanks for your response. The roof is in good condition, what about plastering just the inside of the roof?

TELLIT01

Assuming the current roof is clear, it will look terrible from the outside if it is simply boarded on the underside. For the conservatory to be used as a year round room it would really need insulation in the roof.
Have you also considered that a lot of light which currently gets into any room attached to the conservatory will be lost?

jamie_128

Current roof is polycarbonate so not clear. Yes light not too much of an issue in the room attatched.

Aylesbury_Duck

Can you afford the time and money to wait and replace it with a proper extension? I’m not convinced by these tiled roofs and pseudo-extensions. A conservatory is designed to be a temporary structure providing occasional space. Bodging it to try and make it a proper extension should be a last resort.

jamie_128

No because a proper extension would be about 20 grand.

martinthebandit

Have you considered painting the outside of the roof with greenhouse paint?

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Reflect-Polycarbonate-Conservatory-Shading-Greenhouse/dp/B0795WBXX2

...or similar.

Davesnave

petersdiy wrote: »

A great thing with having a tiled roof is that it normally transforms your conservatory into a room you can use all year round, which compared to a glass roof you maybe limited due to the heat in the summer and lack of insulation may leave it cold in the winter.

This is a vast over-simplification, as it ignores a raft of other things, like the quality of the windows, the construction of the walls, the amount of insulation in the floor (usually zero) and how much ventilation was planned-into the structure.


I can and do use my glass-roofed, insulated conservatory year-round, though on the very hottest days I'm outdoors anyway. It's a good source of free heat throughout cooler months, but as I don't 'need' it, the doors are shut when it isn't warmer inside.


If I definitely (not defiantly!) needed the space, I'd extend, especially, as I could employ a real builder and not the shady types one tends to meet in the unregulated conservatory business!

jamie_128

When you say glass insulated conservatory, what do you mean by this?

Do you have a heating source in the conservatory for winter?

Davesnave

jamie_128 wrote: »

When you say glass insulated conservatory, what do you mean by this?

Do you have a heating source in the conservatory for winter?

I said it was glass-roofed, which means the special tinted double glazing to cut down on infra-red, and normal double glazed windows like you'd put in a house. The extra insulation comes from thermal block cavity walls with Celotex inside and 100mm of Celotex in the floor.

We do have a heating source in there, although we shouldn't from a regulations POV. The radiator has been used a couple of times only. Usually, we just open up the double doors to the living room and let the 5kW wood burner heat it. We did that on the day the Beast from the East was raging and it was 19c in there, which was fine for working.

Most conservatories are a compromise, but as we hate the dark winter months, a room with a solid roof wasn't right for us, so it's one that works in our case. I can't say it was cheap (30m2) , even though I did some of the work on it myself.