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Conservatory advice
Jane Laurie
Posts: 1
I'm planning to build a conservatory at our new house, unheated, mainly for plants, south facing. We have a lot of bananas, cheese plants etc which need to come inside in the winter. The conservatory companies really specialise in conservatories which are used as an extra room and don't know much about plants in them, so I'd love any advice. For example, you can get various types of glass for the roof - are they all equally Ok for plant growth? What about condensation and is this worse with an aluminum conservatory?
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We have a wooden, south facing, lean-to conservatory Jane. The original model was built with the house over 120 years ago, and we had to have it completely rebuilt about 3 years ago, as the wood was rotten and had many repairs over the years. The wood was hard wood, and the glass is single thickness. We hope it will last 40 or so years. We got a specialist company to build it and are very pleased with the results.
It is unheated, we don't need to worry about condensation and the occasional drip of rain does find it's way in. During the summer I cover delicate plants i.e. cucumbers and tomatoes with a thin fleece rather than spraying the glass with thinned paint.
We do sit in the conservatory but mainly it's function is to grow seedlings, over winter delicate plants like cactus, and store apples, squash etc. I hope this helps you
Mine (in Leics) is unheated and double-glazed but I'd say the biggest issue is keeping it cool in summer. I fitted solar powered extraction fans so the stronger the sun, the faster the fans rotate but even with those I need to keep several windows open for most of the year. It can easily hit in excess of 50C in there if the windows are shut which will kill many plants very quickly. I use it to over-winter plants and grow chillies and sweet peppers in the summer. It's also great for those (recently rare) occasions where a very cold snap arrives which threatens seedings in the greenhouse. Because the conservatory is built against the west house wall, it never gets even near freezing point, even in severe weather.