Extension or conservatory??

[jackpot]

Im looking at doing some work on the house early next year. Ideally i would love to have an extension fitted to the rear of the house but i dont think i will have enough money, so i guess a conservatory is the next best thing.

All i want is a kind of summer room to sit in occasionally and maybe storage area for dvds, cd cabinet etc. However im not sure of a few things regarding the conservatory part.

1. Would it still be a conservatory if one of the sides walls was made wholly from brick/block or any other non transparent material that could be used. The reason is that next door would be able to look into the conservatory if i used glass panels and i dont want them to.

2. The house has no outside access to the rear meaning everything would have to come through the house. Is this possible for materials etc etc. How would they dig foundations??

3. Is it generally cheaper to buy self build and employ a builder to build it seperatley or buy it as a package.

 

[noseall]

[quote="jackpot"

1. Would it still be a conservatory if one of the sides walls was made wholly from brick/block or any other non transparent material that could be used. The reason is that next door would be able to look into the conservatory if i used glass panels and i dont want them to.

yes it would.

2. The house has no outside access to the rear meaning everything would have to come through the house. Is this possible for materials etc etc. How would they dig foundations??

the largest element will probably be the conservatory entrance doors, but these can be turned on their side. if you can achieve a straight barrow run then i can't see why not, but it will be a logistical nightmare and will reflect in the cost.

3. Is it generally cheaper to buy self build and employ a builder to build it seperatley or buy it as a package.

you will have to get quotes in to find this out.

 

[Tozzy]

Ideally i would love to have an extension fitted to the rear of the house but i dont think i will have enough money, so i guess a conservatory is the next best thing.

We have a conservatory and a friend of ours said we would have been better off with an extension because it would have been cheaper to build. I can't imagine he's wrong .

 

[stem]

Would it still be a conservatory if one of the sides walls was made wholly from brick/block or any other non transparent material that could be used.

I fell foul of my LABC on this one. According to them a conservatory is "a building that is attached to a building and which has more than 75 per cent of the roof and more than 50 per cent of the wall areas as translucent material"

So my planned conservatory with brick side walls like you suggest didn't have enough glass to be classed as a conservatory so needed planning permission. When I applied for planning permission they said it had too much glass for a building and fell foul of part L of the building regulations which deal with energy efficiency.

Their answer was add more glass so that it is classed as a conservatory and is exempt from the regulations, or have less glass so that it complies with the building regulations.

So I could have more glass or less glass, but not what I wanted.