You will find adverts for solid conservatory roofs in your local newspaper, on billboards in town, and on vans of local installer’s who work in your area, but how can you decide if the right choice for your home is a solid conservatory roof? And how do you find the best agency to carry out the installation for you?

Here we have compiled the things you need to consider when you need to choose an installer for fitting your solid conservatory roof.

1. Is the Solid Conservatory Roof a Refurbishment or a New-build?

The engineering and design behind systems for solid conservatory roofs give you roofs that are light in weight. This allows you to easily refurbish an old conservatory, besides letting you build a new roof conservatory with tiles.

This refurbishment, which is also called retrofitting, allows homeowners to transform their older conservatory that was too hot to use in summer and too cold for use in winter, into a space that can be used all around the year.

When you need a new conservatory with a solid roof, you must find an installer who can do everything that is needed, from building its foundation and walls, fitting the required frames, and then finally installing the solid roof.

2. Conservatories, Planning Permissions and Building Regulations

You can build a new conservatory with glazed, tiled or solid roofs without obtaining any permission, as these structures come under the category of “permitted development”. However, you must visit the Government’s Planning Portal to get details of any limits, placement conditions and sizes allowed.

You have to follow Building Regulations if you are building a home extension, but not for a conservatory. Your conservatory may be classified as an extension if you do not have it separated from the main house, and if it does not have separate walls for the exterior, and windows and doors that are within the requirements of the Building Regulations. Any heating systems in your conservatory must be independent of the main house and have separate controls for temperature and to switch the system on or off.

If all these conditions are not fulfilled then technically your conservatory is an extension and separate Building Regulations will apply. Even where you adhere to the conditions, you still have to follow Building Regulations that apply specifically to electrical work and doors, windows, and glazing that you fix in the conservatory.

3. Your Installer Must Have Certification

Not all the work carried out by contractors, builders and installers is certified, unless they have chosen to register with any scheme for government-approved certification that has a UKAS accreditation. If there is no certification, your installer is a cowboy builder who can create issues for you. This is why most reliable and trusted workmen whose standards of workmanship are of the best, choose to be part of schemes that offer them the required certification.

4. Energy Efficiency and Insulation

Your installer must be able to give you any information that you need about insulation and the energy efficiency that it can lead to. In most cases, where homeowners go in for refurbishment, they are doing so because the conservatory they have is energy inefficient. Whereas windows (such as residence 7 windows) and doors do have a thermal rating, conservatory roofs do not, but you will find the product brochure of the roof and your installer both talking about U-values.

What is U-value

It is a measurement that indicates the effectiveness of any material used for insulation. U-value is the thermal performance that gives you heat loss level measurement. Lower U-values indicate lesser loss of heat, so a low U-value will indicate that your roof will give you a good thermal performance.

5. Fitting a New Roof On Existing Conservatory Frames

Your old conservatory frames can be used for the installation of a new solid conservatory roof. Get your installer to survey your old roof to know whether its frames can have a solid conservatory roof installed on them.

6. Are New Windows and Doors a Necessity

The energy efficiency of your conservatory will improve with a new solid roof, but these benefits may be frittered away if you continue to have windows and doors that are old and not as efficient.