Planet Springwell A Personal Guide To Building Your Own Conservatory

Welcome
For those of you thinking of adding a conservatory to your home then you may find this guide useful. It describes how i purchased a conservatory over the Internet from an excellent company called Carlton Conservatories and contructed it.

The guide explains the steps taken to get from

The conservatory purchased was a custom sized Edwardian Double Hipped with woodgrain finish. The information and prices relate to various dates during the period between 2005-2008. (Please note i have no association with the conservatory company therefore you can assume my comments to unbiased and based upon my personal experience as a customer.)
The initial sections outline the planning and building warrant approval process, if this is of no interest to you then proceed directly to the section entitled 'Purchasing'.
My family and i live in a 150 year old cottage in Scotland and were running out of living space due to the arrival of our son. We had to therefore make a decision, move house or expand our cottage, we chose the latter. We decided to build a two room extension, and as my wife was also keen to have a conservatory we decided to include one in the project.
If you decide to take on a fairly large project you have to make a choice of how much of the work you want to do yourself. This will depend upon your DIY skills, spare time available, the amount of tradesmen you know and trust and ultimately your cash flow. I personally have very little spare time but wanted good control of the project. As we were not in a hurry and wanted to have the work carried out exactly to plan and to a high quality i decide to carryout much of the work myself, employing tradesmen as required for the areas i could not easily manage.
Normally before you can start any kind of construction work on a property in the UK you have to apply to your local council for permission. This is a two stage process, first you require to obtain planning permission and then if successful submit detailed plans to the building control department to obtain a warrant. As we were building a fairly large extension with a conservatory attached we had no choice but to approach the council, this unfortunately had the following downsides:-

- They wanted money for each stage
- It increased the time before any building could begin.

It does appear possible (at least in my county) to add a conservatory to a building without obtaining a building warrant (planning permission may still be needed). I obtained a leaflet from our local council that states a building warrant is not required if the conservatory is

- Attached to house (not a flat or maisonette).
- At least 1m from the property boundary.
- Contains no fixed heating appliance (i.e. no gas or liquids including coal,wood and peat).
- Is less than 8M square.

In the early stages of our project i also tried searching the internet for guidance, but the laws were always unclear. This was either due to the web site saying 'check with your local council' or the planning and building laws being different, not only between Scotland and the rest of the UK but also between the individual regions. Ultimately if you are unsure i would suggest its worth approaching the council its the only way of being sure.