Conservatory Design Problems

Solving conservatory design problems

In the UK residents haven’t often been exposed to blisteringly hot weather. Sunny days are often accompanied with cooling fresh breezes or cloudy intervals that keep the temperature down for most of the time. Because of this, we have been raised with a preconceived view that for a garden to be successful it must be south-facing; to be enjoyed to the full, lawns, flowerbeds, patios and decks must capture the sun when it does appear by facing south.
Not surprisingly, we think of conservatories and designing a conservatory in the same vein but in this case wrongly. Indeed, if you could choose any orientation at all for a glazed roof to point, it would be east or west. Behind the glass a microclimate exists. With no cooling breeze and insulating glass reflecting the heat back in, the power of the sun is revealed all too frequently – and most of us fail to appreciate just how powerful that is.

During these times many people wanted to convert from polycarbonate but this is not always easy trying to build a solid roof structure on top of a conservatory. The dead weight of the materials represents a considerable extra load and with walls that are continuous window frames there is nowhere to support it. PVC-u windows may have a little metal reinforcement inside them but they aren’t capable of bearing loads without lintels over the openings. In most conservatory building there are no lintels and the lightweight roof sheets are taken to eaves beams that are supported by the window frames. The frames are side by side without any posts interspersing them – posts that could be used to support lintels – and the walls are too long for standard timbers or lintels to span along. In short it isn’t easy – not actually impossible but jolly difficult and expensive to achieve and most people faced with the task end up taking the framework of doors and windows down along with the roof and starting again.
So was there anything special about these conservatories that made them suitable for cooking lamb joints in? Not really, they just had all those characteristics that tend to add to solar overheating and none, not one, of those attributes that help to avoid it. Blind manufacturers have risen to the challenge of conservatory overheating and it is possible, if expensive, to have retractable blinds fitted to every section of the roof and every window.
Conservatory Solving Design Problems Contents: