But we're currently spending much more time at home - I'm not sure if our usual autumn holiday will even be possible this year - and of course we also haven't been spending money on travelling, so now seems as good a time as any to look at a conservatory.
We began exploring options a month or so ago. A DIY conservatory kit was first considered, but the companies I approached were not very responsive to non-standard layout queries and technical requirements. So I very soon lost patience with them.
Design and Project Management is actually my business, so I decided that by designing and sourcing everything myself, we would get exactly what we wanted and it would likely be much less costly too, without a middleman taking a cut.
Anyway, finalising the required layout and design was the first objective. We looked at several possibilities from a double-ended lean-to layout of just 3.5 metres length, then a similar arrangement at 5.0 metres, before finally electing to bring the new building right up against the face of the existing extension, making it single-ended and 7.4 metres long in total. There are a few challenges in connecting the buildings together, as will be seen in the photo diary commencing below.
For the basic conservatory layout, we considered either dwarf walls or full height glass all around, but in the end I designed a hybrid version with a dwarf wall on the northern aspect that's visible to passers-by, and using full height glass for the long western elevation which can't be seen from anyone outside the garden, so privacy is not an issue here.
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| basic drawing of the design ... |
We looked into the planning requirements and concluded that this design met all the criteria to be considered 'permitted development', e.g. additional side width not greater than half the width of the original house, nothing protruding forward of the principal elevation fronting the road, single-storey conservatory with total height < 4 metres, total built area less than 50% of the total curtilage, etc.
Unlike house extensions for which planning permission is required, conservatories are a special case and are exempt from having to use materials of a similar type, style and colour as the original house, although we'll try to make the front elevation blend in as sympathetically as possibe. Additionally, Building Regulations are not applicable to conservatories provided a few very simple rules are followed.
But if you're looking to build something similar, then you'll need to do your own research on planning requirements and regulations depending on the design, location and size of the conservatory.