Is your conservatory too cold in the winter months? Do you find yourself closing it off from around November until it warms up again in April? We look at why this happens and what you can do to improve your space and make it a true year-round part of the house.
Time and again we hear the same thing: “My conservatory is too cold in the winter.” Sometimes, we also hear, “My conservatory is too hot in the summer.” In this blog post, since the weather’s not so great outside, we will focus on the cold months and what you can do to make your conservatory a space you can use during the winter.
Conservatories are wonderful spaces where you can experience the openness of the outdoors from within the comfort of your home. In theory, this should be the case throughout the year.
But all too often, the conservatory becomes a no-go area when the temperature outside drops.
Why Is My Conservatory so Cold In the Winter?
Your conservatory is likely much colder than the rest of your house in the winter because it is not as well insulated as the rest of your house. It’s a simple fact that glass and polycarbonate keep less heat in than a well-insulated tiled roof or a wall with a cavity.
The older your conservatory is, the more likely it is to have poor energy efficiency levels, and this isn’t simply to do with the quality of the glazing or uPVC.
Over time, technology has undoubtedly improved. If your conservatory is a couple of decades old, the double glazing it employs will not be up to the same standards as modern double or triple glazing.
This is the case even if you opted for the very highest standards when you had your conservatory fitted. Even the very best glazing these days provides only a fraction of the thermal insulation that a solid wall and roof do.
In fact, the average building’s windows account for roughly half of the building’s yearly heat loss. With that in mind, it’s clear that having an extension made almost entirely of glass and plastic will mean a loss of heat during the winter.
Focus on the Little Things: Seals
It’s quite likely that the seals that keep your conservatory glazing weatherproof and airtight will have suffered some damage over the years, even if you’ve kept a stringent and diligent maintenance routine.
Assuming you don’t have a single glazed conservatory — in which case you will have a freezing space for several months of the year! — the closed units that make up the bulk of your conservatory will be made of more than one pane of glass, with a buffer of inert gas to help retain heat.
This closed unit will gradually lose the inert gas to the environment around it at a rate of around 1% per year, but bigger fluctuations can take place due to a sudden event or gradual damage.
If you notice that the seals around the glass in your conservatory are discolouring or flaking, or if there are visible gaps between the sealant and glazing, you should look to have these repaired or replaced.
But this can only take you so far. Just as it’s important to replace your windows when they come to the end of their life with the highest energy-rated windows, so too should you look to replace your conservatory when it gets too old.
Conservatory Replacement: What Are My Options?
Broadly speaking, if you decide to bite the bullet and embark on serious renovation work on your conservatory, you have two options.
Get a New, Better Conservatory
If you’re still adamant that you want to keep a fully glazed extension to your home, you shouldn’t look any further than the excellent Eurocell conservatory roof system.
This is a modern, fantastic-value system that was designed from the ground up with the input of consumers, fabricators and installers alike.
The design ensures that installation (or replacement and installation, in this case) is extremely straightforward, and the thermal insulation results are unparalleled for a glazed system at this price point.
We can offer a system that will give you a U-value of around 1.2, meaning that insulation levels are higher in this system than any other comparable conservatory design.
We also offer a colour-match service to ensure your new conservatory perfectly fits your property.
Get Your Conservatory Roof Replaced with a Tiled One
With this option, you will notice a huge difference in heat retention in the winter.
Premier Roof Systems offers a revolutionary conservatory roof replacement system that allows for the smooth, simple and fast replacement of a tired and old glazed conservatory roof with a properly insulated and sleek tiled roof.
This is the Guardian Warm Roof, with its unrivalled looks and build quality.
With pitched roof windows, you can keep the natural light that you used to get streaming in from all angles but gain the year-round comfort of a well-insulated standard extension.
You’ll also keep all of the wall windows, allowing your conservatory to retain much of what made it a special place to be in the summer, without sacrificing the entire space for the entirety of winter.
Put simply, if your conservatory is too cold in the winter, there is no better way of dealing with this problem and transforming your home than opting to install a new conservatory roof.
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