Diy Conservatory Over Heating

Conservatory Heating – Planning against overheating

Solar overheating your conservatory is something you must consider at the outset – don’t leave it to be a problem that you have to solve when your conservatory has been built

It isn’t difficult to sketch the basic shape of your home and garden on a piece of paper and endorse it with a compass point indicating north, at least magnetic north. Robbed of a compass you can do worse than getting up early to see where the sun rises or consulting an Ordnance Survey map of your area – these maps are always drawn with north at the top and blessed with grid lines that also point south, east and west.

Don’t despair if your chosen position faces due south because there is more to be done yet. First, you may already have some shading existing in the form of a tree, shrubs or another building. The fact that deciduous trees increase in volume in summer with the production of leaves is a great advantage as a sunshade. On housing estates, other homes are often close enough to cast some shade at certain times of the day over your garden and how much and at what times is something you can watch out for.

If you seem to lack any shade, you can build some in with tinted or bronzed roof sheeting that will dramatically shut down the amount of sunlight getting through. You can even buy reflective glass that is made with a solar reflective coating to bounce back the radiation. You may have seen this used in commercial developments such as office buildings whose windows take on a mirror quality.

Building in some permanent ventilation will be essential and this needs to be secure enough to let you feel you can leave the home unattended with the vents open. On an average window, however, they may only be 800mm long and 10mm wide, giving a cross-sectional area of 8,000 sq mm – not big enough to keep the room cool on a hot summer day but with every window fitted with them the cross-flow of air across the room will be enough for much of the time. In a room of 10 windows, 80,000 sq mm represents a hole the size of a basketball. Roof vents are effective as well because heat rises and they offer it a place to escape out rather than build up.