Replacing conservatory roof

secla

Recently purchased a house with a conservatory that has a flat polycarb roof that is a bit leaky at the low end.
I've seen a few company's recently that fit a pitched tile roof to conservatories. Anyone have any experience whether its worth the expense ? are they any better at containing heat and making the conservatory more usable ? Id love to take it down and build an extension but the cost of that is just ridiculous at the moment.

diystarter7

A tiled roof will certainly retain more heat especially if insulated properly. However, the structure of the conservatory will make a difference how well it retains heat or keeps out the cold/heat. Depending on the size of the build and the garden it may be worth knocking it down and rebuild properly or not at all. An extension often blocks out light to some rooms as does a conservatory if not almost 100% glass.

Our son moved in a house with a large conservatory and the ceiling is light blue glass that is supposed to keep heat and cold out and heat in, its a gimmick.

Bendy_House

Hi Secla.

Cons? It'll reduce the light into the connie, which may be an issue for the adjoining room (not for the connie itself). If so, this can be mitigated by having the odd skylight in the new solid roof.

Pros? A proper insulated lightweight roof will almost certainly transform the comfort, usability, and energy efficiency of the connie, and make it a proper all-year room. (That is assuming that the windows are decent DG units, and any dwarf wall is also insulated. If a solid floor, this too should have insulation, or anticipate flooring it in an insulating covering.)
It'll look a lot better, more like a 'garden room' than a Connie.
It'll reduce rain noise to a huge degree.
It'll increase the saleability of the house a wee bit.

It's also competent -DIYable, which would save you a small fortune.

superstylin

We replaced a polycarb roof with an insulated tiled roof on our conservatory 2 years ago. We were getting ridiculous quotes of up to £9.5k from the big companies (windows plus roofs etc) for a conservatory that's only 4.5*3m.

Eventually got it done for £4.5k. It looks a lot better, the noise reduction is massive, it's cooler in the summer (it used to be baking) but it's still not comfortable enough to be in through the autumn/winter without heating it constantly. We did have floor insulation added but the dwarf walls aren't insulated and the double glazing I believe is original to the house, so 27 years old now. 

TELLIT01

Our conservatory already had a pitched roof, room size roughly 14' x 10' and the new roof cost £8k.  That was about half the cost quoted by the people who built the conservatory.  I would expect cost for converting a flat roof to pitched to be considerably more as the existing front glazed wall may not be strong enough to take the additional weight of the glazed triangular section to create the pitched roof.

Bendy_House

superstylin said:

Eventually got it done for £4.5k.

Who did you get to do it for this, may I ask? Thanks.

thegreenone

diystarter7 said:

the ceiling is light blue glass that is supposed to keep heat and cold out and heat in, its a gimmick.

It's solar reflective glass.  If it's decent, it should stop the sun from heating the conservatory too much.  

It works perfectly well in our conservatory and I sat out there in the summer heat.  It also adds privacy from low flying air traffic. Not that we need that, of course!

superstylin

Bendy_House said:

superstylin said:

Eventually got it done for £4.5k.

Who did you get to do it for this, may I ask? Thanks.

It was a small firm local to the North East called Thermoclad.