Conservatory and garden room air conditioning in Maidstone

Why these rooms are so hard to keep comfortable

Glass lets the sun in and lets heat out. A conservatory gains heat quickly on a bright day, loses it quickly at night and has no thermal mass to even things out. A garden room has a similar problem at a smaller scale, with thinner walls and often a big pair of glazed doors. The figures bear this out: East Malling, near Maidstone, averages 1,723 hours of sun a year and 39 days of air frost.

That is why a plug-in heater and an open door rarely get these rooms right, and why a system that does both jobs suits them. It is also where air-to-air heating has the clearest advantage, because the usual alternative is a plug-in electric heater at full electricity prices.

Sizing for glass

Rules of thumb based on floor area are built for ordinary rooms, so a conservatory usually needs more capacity than its size suggests, particularly if it faces south or west. Blinds, roof type and whether doors to the house stay open all change the answer. Better to measure and work it out than to guess from a chart. See what size air conditioning you need for the factors.

Where the indoor unit goes

Conservatories have little solid wall, and a wall-mounted unit cannot hang from glazing. It usually goes on the house wall, on a dwarf wall if the unit is a floor-standing type, or on a solid section of frame only where the maker and the structure allow. Floor-standing units are worth considering for that reason. Pipes can usually run straight out to the outdoor unit, which keeps the route short.

Power to a garden room

A garden office supplied from the house needs an electrical supply big enough for the unit along with everything else in the room. Many are fed by a single cable sized for sockets and lights, so we check that first. A new circuit to the building is notifiable work under Part P of the Building Regulations. If the room has its own small consumer unit, there may be enough spare capacity already.