Diy Conservatory Roofs

Conservatory Roof

If you look at most conservatory roof designs you might be forgiven for thinking that Victorian conservatories all had ornate ridges with elaborate finials at the apex of a low hexagonal-shaped end with all the windows having a line of fanlight vents beneath the eaves and with a transom beneath each one. In fact conservatories and conservatory roofs of this era looked nothing like this design; instead, larger roof-to-wall windows interspersed with a few fanlights were more common along with steeply pitched roofs with plain ridges.

Raising the conservatory roof pitch to 40 or even 50 degrees will make the glass roof dominant on the elevation sides but this in the main does not look out of place. If it does on your home and you still want to go for a steep roof it may be enough to locate the conservatory away from the principal entrance and front elevation. A more discreet site for it may have to be found, ideally a rear or side gable end if the position of the first floor windows will allow it. Even if the conservatory roof pitch differs, extending the home out from a gable wall with a scaled-down gable-ended addition always appears sympathetic.

Conservatory roof – contemporary design
For most of us, contemporary design in conservatories invokes an image of a glass box, frameless and created by a system of total glazing, minus any solid walls or window frames. To achieve this, glass mullion systems are used to support the glass sheets. The glass box concept has advantages that make it increasingly appealing.

Your own conservatory design might use frameless-glazing with clear silicone joints to weather the panes together or an independent structure (inside or out) on which pre-drilled holes allow the fixings to support the panes. The idea here is to have a wall-less structure that allows 100% clear vision, the structural floor finish supporting the bottom edge of the glass panels.

The base needs to be perfectly level, and to achieve a smooth and true surface, a power-floated finish to the concrete slab is best. If need be, you can cover it with a decorative surfacing of tiles or even floor paint directly, without having to add a layer of screed.

This design lends itself to the slab or raft-style foundation, which allows the concrete base to be shuttered with timber on the outside face and cast inside. For the slab to look presentable, the formwork shuttering should possess a good face that when removed (a process known as “striking”) reveals the face of the concrete as smooth and presentable. No dwarf brickwork wall or plinth needs to be used in this construction, although if the concrete hasn’t come out looking as good as you might have hoped, it can always be faced with a brick skin around it, capped off with a coping stone or course.

In some designs glass rafters and glass piers can be used to support the roof and wall panels, creating a totally transparent structure with no solid elements at all. This system tends to work better in single-glazing, which improves the transparency of the appearance but it does mean that when not in sunlight the room will only stay a few degrees above the outside air temperature and could even drop to freezing during a cold spell.

This kind of conservatory offers the highest levels of vision imaginable and in many ways you are in the garden. Where it becomes noticeable that you are under glass is when the sun shines through it; the solar gain through single glazing is considerable and the temperature can rise dramatically to 25 degrees C and above in early spring sunshine and 40 degrees C in summer heat. A room on the extreme edge of the temperature range like this will have to be used differently; insulated doors to the existing home are essential to keep the cold out but also to allow you to open them up and to let the sun’s heat be distributed a little more fairly.

Contemporary design always works well with water gardens where the combination of glass and reflective water can meet at the surface and blend together. A formal garden pond can be constructed right up to the edge of the glazed wall giving you the chance to sit inside and watch the fish swim by – for the more adventurous water gardener, the pond can pass beneath the glazed wall and be half inside and half out so you can watch the fish swim under. The ultimate transition between home and garden, this design creates the opportunity for an ice-free pond zone and the chance to feed your pond fish from indoors. With the walls of the pond built to the right level the surface of the water can be kept at the bottom edge of the glass to avoid a cold draught at your feet. In warm weather, however, you can expect the water to evaporate and condense on the inside of the glass if it isn’t well-ventilated and this will mean both low and high level ventilation.

Conservatory glass and curves
The architectural effect of curved glass is impressive and many aluminium framed conservatory lean-tos of the 1970s had curved panes at the eaves to make the transition from windows to rooflights. The reason we don’t see them today is because of double-glazing: single glass sheets have, for at least a century, been capable of being made to curve if required relatively cheaply but not so double-glazing.

Flat panes can also be glazed to a curved structure if the size and geometry of the curves are carefully calculated to achieve the appearance of curves in a faceted kind of way. You do need quite a large radius to pull this off successfully.

If you think you couldn’t possibly live with a single-glazed conservatory, go and take a look at the Sheffield Winter Garden. Constructed from 1400 single panes of which 140 are openable vents, the architecture of the building is a high inverted catenary arch but the laminated glass panes are all deceptively flat, each with an aluminium frame carefully interlocking to the next one. This is a temperate conservatory with an underfloor heating system that is designed to merely keep the frost off in winter and that is fuelled from the city’s sustainable grid. But it does show that a cool conservatory can have a function too.