I am thinking of buying a used conservatory from Ebay. My house is ideal for a conservatory and we ideally need a playroom for my missus's Chiild minding business. I am also thinking of installing Solar Panels so I would put electric underfloor heating in the conservatory powered from the panels. Has anyone ever built a conservatory or bought one secondhand? My budget is around £3K perhaps a bit more. Anyone have any tips for me?

Do not get a wood one, they look nicer but bloody hard work!

Plastic ones clip together, they get very hot so get one with a fully glazed roof rather than a plastic top if possible, if plastic make sure it goes in the right way up or the plastic will discolour over time.

The glass is very fragile, have some clean battens of wood to stand ithe glazed panels on, a tiny bit of grit will crack the toughened glass so be careful with the panels and get a few rolls of bubble wrap for transporting about.

For myself having had one.... I would not bother again, better off making a lean to with tiled roof and get an old conservatory to provide the glass panels which would not cost a lot more but if done properly will add a room/value.

Regards Mark

Not sure of planning rules south of the border but please check into the heating part as that may change the rules a fair bit.

Is Scotland it is treated as a development outside of the planning requirement provided its within some guidelines.

Adding heating changes the room use criteria and you start down the heat loss route and regional carbon footprint stuff.

I built my own, and did everything including digging the foundations, bricklaying etc. All pretty straight forward if you've built a car and you have the spare time avaiable.

Three years later I knocked it down and built an extension instead. Don't believe the hype in the brochures, or those rosy lifestyle photos. For half of the year they're either too hot or too cold (despite having 28mm double glazed k-glass roof).

If you were considering a DIY conservatory then a DIY extension isn't much more of a job, and you can stay within permitted development to keep things simple from an admin point of view.

I would agree they are too hot (depends on how shaded from the sun) or too cold (more particularly!) for much of the time, we use ours mainly as a dining room & for use in the winter has 2 x large rads on the CH boiler + a 2Kw electric wall heater to top it up as necessary - to use it all day every day would cost a fortune to heat! We only use it occasionally in winter so not an issue for us

There is no way you will heat it from solar panels, I have a 4Kw solar installation which was put in 3+ years ago on the best tarif, it's great for saving about £200 a year on electric bills & generates around £1k in income, which is brilliant, but of course you can't get the same deal anymore, but although it puts out around 2000Kwh for the year, about 85% of that is between May & October - exactly when you don't need it!! Doesn't matter to me as I get paid anyway, but if you wanted to use the output during the winter it is very low indeed & ain't gonna run electric underfloor heating for any length of time at all (I would guess at literally minutes a day in Dec/Jan!)

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Originally posted by russbost

There is no way you will heat it from solar panels, I have a 4Kw solar installation which was put in 3+ years ago on the best tarif, it's great for saving about £200 a year on electric bills & generates around £1k in income, which is brilliant, but of course you can't get the same deal anymore, but although it puts out around 2000Kwh for the year, about 85% of that is between May & October - exactly when you don't need it!! Doesn't matter to me as I get paid anyway, but if you wanted to use the output during the winter it is very low indeed & ain't gonna run electric underfloor heating for any length of time at all (I would guess at literally minutes a day in Dec/Jan!)

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Originally posted by garyo
I built my own, and did everything including digging the foundations, bricklaying etc. All pretty straight forward if you've built a car and you have the spare time avaiable.

Three years later I knocked it down and built an extension instead. Don't believe the hype in the brochures, or those rosy lifestyle photos. For half of the year they're either too hot or too cold (despite having 28mm double glazed k-glass roof).

If you were considering a DIY conservatory then a DIY extension isn't much more of a job, and you can stay within permitted development to keep things simple from an admin point of view.

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" 'new' solar installations generate electricity even in indirect light and can be relied upon to generate at least 5 hours of electrickery at 4Kw even in the winter"

It's true that panels (both new & old) generate power in indirect light, but 5 hours at 4Kwh in Winter is absolutely NOT true (5Hrs at 4Kwh would be good even in the Summer months!) - there are government figures which will confirm that, if it WERE true then your friend has just invented a completely new system & if he'd like me to market it for him we would both be millionaires overnight! Modern panels are only fractionally better than they were 3 years ago, they are still VERY inefficient - I've just checked my figures & the average monthly output for Nov, Dec, Jan, Feb, Mar is 70Kwh per month, if you take March out of the equation it halves that figure! Bear in mind these are real figures averaged over 3 years & I live in the South of England, the display faces SW, so not absolutely ideal, but not far off - the average is just over 2Kwh per day & if you remove March then that becomes around 1Kwh per day - enough to run 2Kw of underfloor heating for 1/2 hr, or 500W for 2 hours, that's not going to make a conservatory very warm!

I'm not trying to wee on anyone's parade, I'm just trying to show you when you will actually generate the electricity, as a comparison from his figures your panels would be 20 times more efficient than mine are!!!! You generate nearly all the power from May to Sep.

Don't get me wrong, it will generate probably at least 2000Kwh a year & even at the latest tarifs I think that will pay you around £250pa & save you around £200 on your electric bill, but those are the sort of figures you should be looking at when weighing up what it costs & what the benefits are.

The other thing to bear in mind is how long you will need to live in the property for it to pay back, at the old tarif I'm on 3 years in I have over 1/3 of my investment back already, should be at least 1/2 by the end of the 4th year on the new tarifs even if you get it installed VERY cheaply (like sub £5k) it will still take over 10 years to pay back the initial investment & start producing a return - I'm not saying don't do it, it's generally still a good idea & if everyone did it. it would help the planet, but just be aware that it won't do what this guy has told you it will!

Thanks Russ, actual figures from a person actually generating is what its all about. Real figures. I need to sit down with my friend and run some figures. Maybe I got the wrong end of the stick when I was told they would generate electricity for a minimum of 5 hours a day. Obviously they will generate electricity for 5 hours a day but not a 4KW.

My partner is starting a child minding business and is home all day so my house is in need of heating all day. We have a huge Wood Burning stove which is in constant use and heats the house relatively cheaply. It may be I get a small stove to heat the conservatory/extension.

I looked at this very thing about this time last year..... Don't bother with a 2nd hand one. It just won't go together correctly and will leak and be a right PITA !

I ended up buying one from these guys (NTDWM) Conseratory Group - phone them and speak to Roy. He ended up doing me a cracking deal.

I got a 4.5m x 3m, 3 sided conservatory with one set of doors and 2 openers for £3421.
This might also included the doors from the house which were a set of patio doors (I'd have to look at the quote to confirm)

When I totalled it up, it was just as cheap to get this than it was a second hand one (if you add the time to take it down and lorry hire etc).

However, I will say I spent another 3k on having the base done and floor tiles + having them laid, oh, and there was electric underfloor heating too.
All in all, it was 7k.

We don't have the underfloor on much as it takes ages for the heat to come through the ceramic tiles, so it's bloody cold out there this time of year.

Ours is on the north side of the house so doesn't get too hot in summer, and is links 3 different rooms so gets used all the time.
A pine floor and underfloor heating for sub zero nights make in nice in winter.

Used to work in the windows & conservatory business.
Beware of buying a secondhand one, They can be a nightmare if you don't know what you are doing

We used to sell a few brand new DIY ones and the customers were always on the phone asking where does this bit go ? etc


We've got a Hardwood one and its lovely when its been treated, But I have to retreat it every 6 years, So go for a UPVC one if you want low maintenance. Also White UPVC ones are cheaper than 'coloured' ones and glass roofs are a lot more expensive than polycarb.

If you do decide to buy one, get a few quotes, Check and compare the specification and try and get details of somebody who has used the company etc