Five checks before you decide
Most of what makes a conservatory miserable lives overhead: the chill, the heat, drips at the bars and rain on hollow sheets. A roof can only be as good as what it sits on, though, so start at ground level and work up. Ten minutes with a torch on a grey afternoon tells you most of what a surveyor would look at first, and it costs nothing.
Walk round the room with these in mind
- FramesPress gently on each window frame. Flexing, split corners or rotten timber point at the frame, not the roof.
- Dwarf wallsLook for cracks through the bricks, gaps where frame meets wall and damp low down on the inside.
- Doors and opening windowsDo they shut and lock without lifting? A dropped door can be adjusted; a twisted frame cannot.
- Glass unitsMist between panes means a failed seal. A few can be swapped; dozens suggest the whole lot is ageing.
- Floor and baseA sloping floor or cracks running across it can mean the base has moved.
When a new roof is enough
If the frames are square and firm, the walls are dry and the doors behave, the room's troubles are almost certainly up top. Swapping the roof for a 75 mm insulated panel roof brings heat loss through the ceiling down to about 0.43 W/m²K, blocks the high summer sun and removes the hollow 25 mm polycarbonate that BRE measured at 64.6 dB in lab heavy rain.
Frames, glass walls and floor all stay put. Most roofs go on in one dry day and bigger ones in two. Our page on swapping only the roof explains what happens to the frame while the work is under way.
The look can change as well. The top skin comes in white, light grey or anthracite grey, and we have fitted panel roofs onto copper tone and oak effect frames, so a tired white conservatory can read quite differently from the garden without a single new window. The options are on the panel colours page.
When a rebuild is the better spend
Some conservatories cannot be saved from the roof down. Warning signs are cracks running through the brickwork, frames that have bowed or rotted, doors that will not close however often they are adjusted, a base that has sunk, or a layout that no longer suits how you live. A new roof on a frame like that is money spent at the wrong end.
If our surveyor finds the frame cannot carry a panel roof, or would need so much work that rebuilding makes more sense, we tell you before any price is agreed. We do not build conservatories, so that job would go to a builder or a conservatory company, and we cannot give you a figure for it.
Be wary of the middle case too: a frame that is only just strong enough. Spending heavily on posts and beams to hold a new roof on a conservatory whose walls and doors are also near the end of their life rarely adds up. Put the cost of that strengthening next to a rebuild before you commit to either.
Roof swap against a rebuild
A rebuild gives you everything new, including the chance to change the size or shape. A roof swap keeps what still works and fixes what does not. uPVC and aluminium frames tend to outlast the polycarbonate sheets they carry by a long way, so on an older conservatory it is often the plastic overhead that gives up first.
New panel roof on the old frame
- Old roof off, panels on, usually inside one day
- Frames, walls, doors and floor left as they are
- Free survey, then a fixed written price, from £3,000
- A 10 year insurance backed guarantee on the roof
Whole new conservatory
- Demolition, then new walls or base if needed, frames and roof
- A much longer build, with the room out of use throughout
- New doors, windows and layout, if you want them
- Priced by the builder; typically far more than a roof alone
The ground in between
It is rarely all or nothing. A glazier can replace a handful of misted units, a dropped door can be rehung, a cracked sill can be sealed. Doing those small jobs and changing the roof can leave you with a room that works for far less than starting from bare ground. Mention anything else that bothers you when you book, and we will point out what we see at the survey.
The order matters a little. Sort the roof first and any later glazing work happens in a room that is already warm and dry to stand in, while fixing the glass first and leaving a leaking roof means fresh units sitting under the same drips.
Where to go from here
Check where your room falls on the conservatory roof cost page, then answer the quote questions. We charge nothing for the survey and take no money ahead of it. If a cheaper roof is also on your list, panels against new polycarbonate sets the two side by side, and once you have chosen, the Rain Ledger shows which months bring your town the most dry working days for the work.
