‘Garden Room’ Extension - where to start?

SootySweep1

Hi
We've got what we believe is an orangerie. It's a proper brick built extension but with a large glass lantern roof & large glass patio doors.
We love the lantern roof as it let's in loads of light.
Jen

Doozergirl

SootySweep1 said:

Hi
We've got what we believe is an orangerie. It's a proper brick built extension but with a large glass lantern roof & large glass patio doors.
We love the lantern roof as it let's in loads of light.
Jen

You've got an extension. 

I have no idea where the 'orangery' idea comes from with modern extensions.  If you google what a traditional orangery actually looks like, it's a posh greenhouse and quite a stretch of the imagination from what every extension we get asked to build looks like now - big glass doors, roof lights.   It's the current fashion for extensions, they're not orangeries.  

Doozergirl

Anoneemoose said:

Evening all,

I’m just looking for advice on how to go about this process. We’ve had lots of work done in the house over the years (we’ve got a reliable joiner, plasterer, electrician, roofer - could do with a new plumber as ours retired) but we’ve never had a ‘builder’. We want to add an additional room downstairs, sort of a conservatory but a with a proper roof and structure to support that (that’s the ‘garden room’ reference, please advise if it’s called something else). 

Anyway, as I say we’ve never had a builder and we just don’t know where to start looking for one and what sort of things we should be asking for/looking for in terms of making sure they’re reliable and we don’t lose out money wise. (I’ve probably watched too many episodes of Cowboy Builders). 

Can anyone offer any tips please?

Thanks in advance. 

You need to establish what you want.  Giving fancy names to structures seems to blur what people think they are buying, and conservatory companies, with their lightweight roofs, are really using that blurring to their advantage.  The fact that extensions also use more and more glass, gets people confused.  

If you want a proper extension, you do want a builder.   An architect and a builder.   It doesn't matter how much glass it has in it, a fully compliant extension has deep footings, lots of insulation and, if it has lots of glass, professional calculations that prove that the house remains thermally efficient (warm) with the wall knocked through into the main house, regardless of the amount of glass.  

If you want to pay less for a structure that should remain separated from the house by doors because it doesn't meet building regulations, then you're in conservatory company territory.   

That's your difference.  There's also a gap in knowledge and experience, so I'd be particularly wary of any company that sells conservatories but also rooms that look more substantial, because there's a high chance of hearing BS from sales people who don't build a thing themselves, let alone understand what is compliant.  

That blurring is evident in the first reply to your post.  The definition of 'sun room' is not an extension under permitted development.  Anyone can have a structure under permitted development and it doesn't matter what it's made of or what it is called.  It could be a shed, it could be built like a fortress.   Permitted development is a nationally standardised pre-approved level of planning permission that virtually all of us benefit from (with the main exception of listed buildings).    Planning permission deals with the principle of the presence of a structure, nothing else.  

Building Control is what deals with the quality of what is there and whether it conforms as part of the house - "an extension" or whether it has to be an outbuilding, separate from the thermal envelope of the house (insert latest fancy name for it here). 

No building company worth their salt is going to call an extension anything other than what it is.  An extension meets the *minimum* standard of building control, so to call it anything else is doing the building and the builder's quality of work a disservice.  

It's fine if you want the cheaper version that doesn't meet those minimum standards, just don't be lulled by semantics or by people trying to sell you something that isn't what you think/hope it is.