Bungalows and conservatories

Sapindus

I don't mind the idea of a conservatory itself.  It just seems odd to have a bedroom window that opens out into one, and even stranger if it's the door.  I suppose we will just have to see how it "feels" when we get round to actually viewing houses.

Cit6

Non of your business what people do with there houses. 

Murphybear

When we bought our bungalow it had a decent sized garden and a small conservatory looking out onto the garden.  It was really lovely, we used to play bridge there    The cat used to sleep in it a lot of the year even when it was quite hot.  That’s cats for you

While we were house hunting we saw a house which had a tiny garden and most of it was taken up by a very large conservatory, it was truly awful.  

dinosaur66

i put up a conservatory on a house flip bunglow i bought as it had a really tiny kitchen for a 2 bed double fronted bunglow and did not have space for washing machine / stand up fridge freezer /spin dryer /i even had to trim the overhead  kitchen carcases down

got conservatory for nothing on marketplace and me and a mate removed it and put it up .

no dwarf wall needed

bought on ebay £100  50mm astro turf / used that on the roof over polycarbonate / insulated the inside/plasterboard and put in a radiator / brother in law put in  plug sockets / i left the kitchen back door and walls as they were

on viewings people were not put off the tiny kitchen and i live in a town where 50% of propertys are bungalows and small swing a cat kitchens are common in 1 and 2 beds

so i like conservatorys albeit i live in a bungalow and do not have one / i have a garden office instead

daveyjp

youth_leader said:

I'm in a semi detached bungalow and the next door neighbour had a full glass conservatory very close to my fence. 

Last year I discovered he was going to change it into a room with a tiled roof.  I was concerned but found out he didn't need planning permission because he was using the same 'footprint'.  

My parents are in a detached bungalow which had a full width (20m or so) conservatory about 2.5m deep built by my grandparents,  it was really useful extra space as it had washing machine, fridge and freezer in one half, the other had a seating area which in summer was welcome, but it was very old and past its best.

Parents had it demolished and had a proper extension on the same footprint to increase sizes of kitchen, bathroom and bedroom and added a utility room and extra cloakroom toilet.  They sit outside in summer!

Dustyevsky

This is supposed to be a money-saving forum, yet no one has mentioned the advantage of having a conservatory as a buffer against inclement weather and a potential source of free heat. Sunny winter days (remember them?) mean the conservatory will do all the daytime heating.

Naturally, there are different qualities of these non-permanent structures, but as people at home most days, we appreciate the above advantages, and also the ability to seat more than 6 people at Christmas/ Easter/ special occasions, when our dining area's too small.

youth_leader

You've reminded me - friends lost their two lovebirds that they kept in their conservatory, sadly overcome by heatstroke.  They can get very hot indeed.

Silvertabby

Dustyevsky said:

This is supposed to be a money-saving forum, yet no one has mentioned the advantage of having a conservatory as a buffer against inclement weather and a potential source of free heat. Sunny winter days (remember them?) mean the conservatory will do all the daytime heating.

Naturally, there are different qualities of these non-permanent structures, but as people at home most days, we appreciate the above advantages, and also the ability to seat more than 6 people at Christmas/ Easter/ special occasions, when our dining area's too small.

Second this.  There's a huge difference in conservatories, but the cheapest ones, built on a flat pack metal base, seem to give them all a bad name.

Ours was built properly from the ground upwards, starting with the foundations being dug out by a mini digger and concrete laid.  The walls are more (double skin)  brick than glass, with the roof being tinted, thermal glass.  Think hybrid conservatory/orangery.

Bring east facing may help, but we use ours all year round, as a second lounge.  

Dustyevsky

youth_leader said:

You've reminded me - friends lost their two lovebirds that they kept in their conservatory, sadly overcome by heatstroke.  They can get very hot indeed.

Usability depends on orientation and other factors in the spec, like roof vents. However, frying cage birds in a conservatory is like leaving a dog in a car on a hot day; it's simply lack of common sense, bordering on negligence.

Stubod

..love our conservatory, but being "old", it suffers from the usual problem of too hot in the summer and too cold in the Winter. As it's a wooden one and starting to rot, we are replacing it with a new one with a better quality / modern roof that reduces the heat coming in, whilst retating whatever heat is in it.

We were in two minds as we are thinking about selling at some point, but the conservatory we have would probably have actually "de-valued" the property given it's present condition.

One builder did suggest that the low cost option would be to demolish it, and just replace it with a patio. But we may not be moving for years as we can't really find anything else we like, and we do use our conservatory a lot. However I do understand that conservatories in general seemed to have fallen out of fashion for some reason?..(Local estate agents advised that seperate garden rooms are now more popular?).