Diy Conservatory Building Walls

Conservatory Walls
With the contemporary style, it is possible to build a conservatory entirely without walls, but the traditional and most common design approach uses a dwarf wall beneath the conservatory windows which adds some structural strength to the addition and ties in with the existing walls of your home, both physically and aesthetically.

If you’re not buying a DIY conservatory wall kit, the height of the conservatory dwarf walls is at your discretion, but to determine it, you need to consider how the elevations will work out with the conservatory frames and most importantly the doors. Windows can be made in any size you require, but it is also possible to buy them in standard sizes off the shelf. This is by far the most economical solution.

Most conservatories designs are from the top down. The position of the sills and first-floor windows above the ground is a fixed distance that can only be changed by lowering the ground level, so this dimension and the roof pitch usually determine the height of the frame. Dwarf walls must be designed in brick course height and tend to be constructed at between 375 and 750 mm.
Brick sizes are standard and with a mortar bed joint included, each course represents about 75mm. It’s important to include a DPCwhich will be positioned beneath the door sill and at least two courses (150mm) above ground level. Since this represents a step down to ground, you should recognise that most brickwork is measured above DPC level as the point where the superstructure begins. If you’d rather not have a two-course step-down, or if your ground and floor levels are a long way apart, you should look at forming external steps from the doors leading into the garden.

Wall of less than four courses above DPC don’t work terribly well, for one thing, the DPC can be thought of as a break in the bond of brick courses. DPC’s are usually polythene and the wall can “slip” on their surface if it isn’t held down by enough self-weight: at two or three courses, more weight is required to pin the DPC in place and resist the tendency to slip out of plane. Door frames are normally fixed at the sides and at the head but not at the sill, as to do this would mean puncturing the DPC below. PVC-u windows are screwed down at the cill, usually with 100 mm frame-fixing screws that will really only do their task well when fixed into enough masonry to be secure.

Walls within 1 m of the boundary
Apart from the dwarf walls beneath the windows, there is one other type of wall, which tends to be much underrated. The gable end wall only appears in solid masonry, it seems, if it is close to the boundary of your garden. This goes back to before 1985, when conservatories were controlled under the Building Rgulations and within 1 m of the boundary had to have fire-resistant walls to prevent the spread of fire. This effectively meant that every rear addition conservatory on semi-detached and terraced homes had at least one side wall that couldn’t be framed and glazed.
These boundary line walls are regarded as important when they are controlled under the Building Regulations- a requirement that restricts the external spread of fire from one building to another is not often relaxed, let alone dispensed with. It might seem odd that this relates to the wall only, and that you could happily comply with a glazed roof pitching onto it and the boundary side. Fire-resistant glass is available if you are locked into the idea of windows on this side, but it doesn’t come cheap.
To get 60 minutes of fire insulation from glass means to have a glazed unit that contains an intumescing core material enclosing the glass layers to a considerable thickness. This isn’t double-glazing with an air gap, but a laminated single-glazed product that can chemically react with heat to form a fire barrier. To use this type of glass in the frame of a conservatory would not only be viciously expensive but fairly stupid, since it only works once and the heat from the sun could be enough to activate it on a hot day. If you are given a relaxation to allow “non-insulating” fire-resistant glass, 60 minutes fire insulation can be obtained from Georgian-wired polished plate that is much less thick.

Brickwork
The walls of your conservatory may be low, but their quality is just as important as anywhere else. Poor quality brickwork will always stand out, and will never improve with age. Many standardised conservatories are made to brick dimensions, and if you’re designing your own, you should look to 215 mm long brick sizes for the length of walls and 75 mm high courses.
The mortar joints between the bricks should be if equal thickness in every course and of equal width in the perp joints (the vertical ones) if the end result is to look neat.
For the angled corners of hexagonal-shaped conservatories, special squint bricks can be ordered in advance and look so much better than bricks cut on site. Similarly, bull-nose bricks and other specials can be used beneath the windows or in projecting bands or quoins to make a special feature.