Conservatory Buyers Guide - helping you get it right first time
Choosing a conservatory can be a daunting task, ensuring the room is structurally sound, is fit for the purpose you have in mind, is warm enough in the winter and hopefully cool enough to enjoy in the summer. It also needs to ompliment the existing house. It is very difiicult for the homeowner, whose experience of conservatories and the general building trade may be limited to avoid the pitfalls that exist and we strongly recommend you take professional advice as early in your conservatory design proces as possible. It has taken us decades of experience to amass our knowledge of products and design solutions that will ensue you get the room you want and avoid expensive design or product specification mistakes. To keep things nice and simple we have broken down our buyers guide into 4 seperate areas.
Conservatory Buyers Guide, Why? This is the bit that only you can deal with, why do you want an extra room. Years ago we built mainly traditional conservatories that would be used as an occasional room, to relax and read the paper etc. More recently, as the thermal performance of glazing has improved we are seeing clients building rooms for more practical reasons, Dining Rooms, Playrooms, Home Office etc being among the most popular uses. These days you can consider a conservatory as an alternative to a solid roofed extension.
Conservatory Buyers Guide, Where? Your site considerations are unique to you and may affect the design you choose. The conservatory style should blend in with the existing property as closely as possible. Most site considerations have a solution, for example a sloping site, drain inspection chambers, soil pipes and the like affect the specification but a good conservatory professional will hve encountered most of these issues before and can show you photographs of how they were overcome. The location of the proposed conservatory in relation to direct sunlight has an enormous impact on the glazing solutions you should specify, with a North facing conservatory you will be looking to maximize light transmission, conversely South facing conservatories need to be properly specified to prevent excessive summer heat build up. Nano-coating technology has transformed has transformed the solutions available, ask your professional for advice.
Conservatory Buyers Guide, What? Whilst the design you choose will usually be a matter of personal choice, within reason and the constraints of the existing property, our extensive galleries of completed installations will help you choose a style.Regarding size, well it's important to remember the use of the room, it really needs to be big enough so it is fit for purpose. Think about the furniture you intend to put in the room, a scale drawing can usually help at this point. To use a car analogy; if you have a large family a 2 seater sports car may look nice but will not be your most practical option.
Conservatory Buyers Guide, Who? This will be your most important choice of all.
You should choose an experienced conservatory specialist, a company that has been in business long enough to have installed conservatories of all different styles in a huge variety of situations and believes in honouring its commitments.
you must avoid the companies who do a terrible job, then go bust leaving a trail of destruction behind them before setting up again, often in the same name at the same location before repeating the process and finding some more victims. It is easy enough to ensure the company is genuine and has been in business a long time by visiting the Companies House website and entering the comapny number in the free WebCheck service. Go ahead and start with us, our company number is 3937408
Companies House WebCheck Service
