Conservatories are a great addition to your home, creating a valuable place where the whole family can enjoy quality time or dine together. These sun-filled rooms inspired by greenhouses can be used as TV rooms, home offices, utility rooms, and for many other purposes, however, they do need to have the right insulation to make the most of them all year round.
Insulating your conservatory has many benefits, from reducing energy bills to providing a comfortable space to use throughout the year. In this article, we will look at the costs involved in conservatory roof insulation, the benefits obtained by insulating these rooms, the types of roof insulation you can apply to your conservatory, alternative insulation solutions, and more.
How Much Does it Cost to Insulate a Conservatory Roof?
Conservatories come in many designs, such as Victorian, T-shaped, or Edwardian, or they can even be made bespoke to your property. This roof insulation cost analysis will help you determine the investment cost of your project and help you decide the best course of action for your house, whatever your design goals and budget.
Supply Costs
Insulating a conservatory can be achieved by using a different set of materials, some of the most common ones are: plastered insulation, uPVC insulation, aluminium polycarbonate roofs, and solar control films. The type of material depends on the chosen insulation for the room.
Insulation foils tend to range from £25 up to £70 depending on the quality of the materials and the amount you need. Timber batons for the rafters cost £2.50 – £5, but you can buy them in bulk for £40 – £55 to reduce costs, and UPVC screws go from £3 – £7.
On top of the materials, you have to include the installation cost of hiring a professional. Altogether, the cost per square metre for your conservatory roof insulation including materials and workmanship, may range from £120 up to £200 depending on the type of insulation you choose.
Additional costs
The insulation of your conservatory room roof is not the only cost that you may consider when renovating your conservatory. You may also have to consider plastering, painting, redecorating, and even flooring as part of your conservatory roof insulation project.
Redecorating
Renovating the interior decoration of your conservatory to go with your roof can be a good way of ensuring your roof and room aesthetics match, adding a more cohesive look and feel to your conservatory. This cost greatly varies depending on the type of furniture placed in the room, the quality of the materials, and the design of each piece. If you decide to hire a specialist, you may expect to pay £80 – £120 per hour for an interior designer.
Plastering and painting
After renovating the insulation for the roof of your conservatory, you may need to end up plastering the wall that is shared with the house and even painting the whole room. The cost to hire a professional to plaster and paint your conservatory ranges on average at £15 – £25 per hour, this might end up costing you £150 for the roof and £250 per conventional wall.
Flooring
Finally, you may want to update the flooring of your conservatory, especially if there are signs of deterioration around it. Flooring costs in the UK depend on the material chosen, ranging from £17 – £32 per square metre for laminate floors, £55 – £70 for hardwood floors, £9 – £18 for vinyl floors, and £21 – £30 for linoleum.
What are the Benefits of Insulating Your Conservatory?
You can obtain many benefits by insulating the roof of your conservatory. Here are the most important ones for you to consider.
Use It All Year Round
Conservatories are mostly made out of glass, meaning that their temperature can get stiflingly high during the hottest months of summer and particularly icy in the colder winter months. Properly insulating a conservatory roof can reduce temperature exchange with the outside, making the temperature of the room more comfortable during winter and summer.
Save Money on Energy Bills
Due to the glass design of a conservatory and how it easily exchanges temperatures with the outside, conservatories require additional heating and cooling to adapt the temperature of the room to ideal conditions. With proper insulation, these extra heat and cooling requirements are reduced, therefore reducing how much money you need to spend on electricity.
Reduce Outdoor Noise
Using a conservatory may be uncomfortable during the busy hours of the day if you live in a crowded area since glass is a poor noise insulator. Insulating the roof of your conservatory can help partially reduce that problem, but you can also further noise-proof your conservatory by installing double-glazing or laminated glass on the window walls, keeping the noises out and reducing temperature exchange.
What are the Different Types of Conservatory Insulation?
There are five popular types of insulation systems used for conservatory roofs. Let’s find out more about them and how they will improve your conservatory.
Plastered Insultation
Plastered insulation is a simple yet effective way to insulate the roof of your conservatory. The process requires removing the plaster of your roof if there is any, installing an insulating material to improve insulation, and finally plastering the whole thing to fully insulate the roof. This insulation option can prove to be quite efficient, however, it is not transparent or highly decorative.
uPVC Insulation
Unplasticized Polyvinyl Chloride (uPVC) is a rigid plastic featuring great insulating properties. This material can be made into opaque roofs or transparent windows. A huge benefit of uPVC roof insulation is that it is both efficient and aesthetic, making it one of the most popular roof insulation solutions for conservatories.
Aluminium Foil Insulation
Aluminium foil insulation made out of aluminised polyester is one of the best and most efficient roof insulation solutions. The material is installed at the rafters of the roof in almost any shape, while this reduces aesthetic transparencies, it reflects up to 95% of the heat radiation received, making it perfect to keep the heat outside during summer and inside during winter.
Polycarbonate Roofing
Polycarbonate is another strong material used for roof insulation. This material is made into sheets that are highly resistant to UV lights, which can be installed in odd shapes and that also have transparency, delivering a final elegant and aesthetic roof. For roof insulation, two polycarbonate sheets are installed with an air gap in between, keeping the air cool during summer by resisting UV light and preventing heat losses in winter.
Solar Control Film
Solar control film is a relatively efficient and low-cost roof insulation solution that has become quite popular in recent years. The solar control film is a thin self-adhesive sheet with a highly reflective exterior and insulating properties, which can reduce the heat during summer by reflecting UV lights and heat radiation and prevent heat from escaping thanks to its insulating properties.
Building and Planning Regulations for Conservatory Insulation
To avoid legal problems, you should always comply with planning regulations in the UK. The good news is that conservatories are exempt from building regulations as long as they comply with the following:
- Built on ground level
- It is a single-store building.
- Occupies less than 30 square metres.
- Complies with electrical regulations
- Has an independent heating/cooling system
- It is separated from the home by walls, floors, and windows.
If you want to make an entrance from your house to the conservatory, you do require building regulation approval. This means that you can insulate the roof of your conservatory or even build your new conservatory with the right insulation, without requiring building regulation approval.
What Else Can You Do to Insulate Your Conservatory?
Insulating the roof of your conservatory is not the only thing you can do to achieve the optimum temperature conditions within your conservatory. Some additional solutions you can use are:
Underfloor Heating
Underfloor heating is one of the most common solutions to heating a conservatory during winter, and colder days in general. To achieve this, radiators are installed on the floor of the room, heating them and warming the air in general as heat rises from the ground. You can install wet underfloor heating using a pipe system or electric heating using heating resistors, increasing the temperature of the place ground up.
Draught Excluders
When there are strong winds, small gaps in your doors and windows will exhaust the ideal temperature that you have achieved within your conservatory using your heating system or A/C. To avoid this, you can use draught excluders. These are strips of insulating material placed in the gaps in doors and windows, keeping the place warm and comfortable year-round.
Tinted Glass or Window Film
You can exchange traditional transparent windows for tinted glass or tinted window films to reduce heat from coming in during the summer. Since tinted glass or window films reject a portion of the solar light spectrum, they also reduce heat input to the room in the hottest months of the year. To avoid heat from going out, you can install double-tinted glasses with a gap of air in between.
Triple Glazing
If windows featuring a double gap of air in between can help reduce heat exchange with the outside, triple glazing will work wonders. Triple glazing is a window or ceiling system featuring three glasses separated by two gaps of air or an insulation gas such as argon. The double barrier will efficiently keep the heat inside during the winter and outside during the summer. It also works as an acoustic insulator.
Why You Should Hire an Expert to Insulate Your Conservatory Roof
Performing DIY projects is fun, but delicate installations such as the roof of your conservatory will require hiring an expert to perform an outstanding job so you can enjoy a pleasant experience in your conservatory. When using costly materials and working with a glass roof, such as you would to insulate the roof of your conservatory, you need to be careful to avoid losing money or having to redo the whole thing.
As you hire an expert to insulate the roof of your conservatory, you can enjoy all the benefits of your new insulation by keeping the heat outside during the summer and inside during the winter. A proper installation will grant you the benefits of using your conservatory year-round, reducing your electricity expenses, and saving you money in the long-term.
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