Nothing sells a new conservatory roof like February. Three months of a room that has been too cold to sit in, condensation running down the frames and rain on polycarbonate loud enough to stop a conversation, and by the end of winter most people have decided. A conservatory roof replacement produces an odd load, very bulky in one respect and very heavy in another, and it needs planning for both. Our Ainsdale skip hire service covers a good number of these.
What is coming off and why it went wrong
Most conservatories around here from the nineteen nineties and early two thousands went up with multiwall polycarbonate roofs. It was cheap, light and easy to work with, and it has two well known failings. It insulates poorly, so the room is unusable in January and unbearable in July, and the flutes discolour and fill with algae over time.
Glass roofed conservatories of the same era used sealed units that were not always as thermally efficient as they were sold as being, and after twenty five years a proportion will have failed seals and misting between the panes.
The other thing a cold winter exposes is the frame and the gutter line. Water getting in at the junction with the house is common, and a fair amount of what looks like condensation is actually a leak. Worth establishing which one you have before spending money on a roof, because a new roof will not fix a failed abutment detail.
Old polycarbonate is all volume and no weight
The sheets come off easily and then present the classic bulky waste problem. They are large, rigid, light and they do not stack or compress in any useful way. Three or four full length sheets thrown into a skip whole will take up a startling proportion of it while weighing almost nothing.
Cut them down. A handsaw or a sharp knife along the flutes reduces the volume enormously and takes very little time. Sheets cut into manageable lengths and stacked flat in the bottom of the skip leave you room for everything else.
Do not leave them loose and uncut in an open skip overnight. Ainsdale gets weather off the sea and a full length polycarbonate sheet is essentially a sail. It will not be in the skip in the morning.
Glass is the other extreme
If the existing roof is glass, the load changes completely. Sealed units are heavy, awkward and need handling with respect, particularly coming down off a roof structure.
This is not a solo job and it is not one for improvising. Units come out from the top, they need two people minimum, and the person on the ground needs somewhere prepared to put them rather than taking the weight and then looking around.
Roof glass is usually toughened or laminated rather than plain float, so it behaves better when it breaks than horticultural glass does. It still needs containing in the skip rather than going in loose, and it does not go to a bottle bank, because flat glass and container glass are separate recycling streams entirely.
The frame, and the bit worth keeping
The glazing bars and the ring beam are usually aluminium, sometimes with a plastic capping. Aluminium has a real scrap value and it is worth separating rather than burying it in a mixed load. The same applies to any steel reinforcement inside the frames.
Ten minutes stacking the metal separately at the side of the skip rather than throwing it in is worth doing, and it makes the load better for us as well, because metal recovered cleanly is metal that does not have to be picked out of a mixed pile at our end. Our environmental and recycling page covers how the sorting works once the load reaches our site.
What a solid roof adds
If you are replacing polycarbonate with an insulated solid roof rather than like for like, there are two extra considerations.
The first is weight, and that is a matter for whoever is doing the work rather than for us. A solid roof is considerably heavier than the polycarbonate it replaces, and the existing frame and base were designed for the original load. Any competent installer will assess it, and it is a question worth asking directly if nobody has raised it with you.
The second is that a solid roof job usually brings internal work with it. Plasterboard, insulation and often new plastering, which produces gypsum waste that has to be kept out of the general load. Our page on plasterboard disposal and building waste separation explains why that separation is required.
Sizing and placement
For a polycarbonate roof coming off and a solid one going on, a 4 tonne midi skip is usually adequate provided the sheets are cut down. For a glass roof, or where the whole conservatory is being rebuilt rather than reroofed, an 8 tonne builders skip is the safer choice.
Ainsdale sits within Sefton borough, so a skip on the road needs a permit from Sefton Council at £36 per month, and our guide to skip permits in Southport covers the process. Most properties here have driveway space, which avoids all of it.
Local coverage
We work this coastal stretch daily, running Birkdale skip hire and Formby skip hire jobs alongside Ainsdale.
Ring us on 01704 779345 and tell us whether the existing roof is glass or polycarbonate. That is the whole of what we need to size it. Our contact page is there if you prefer.
