About Warmlid: a roof team with one job

Why only one job

A conservatory roof swap has a handful of steps that have to be right: the measurements, the frame check, the panel cut, the seal at the wall. A firm that also does kitchens, driveways and extensions does each of those now and then. We do them every working day, so the surveyor knows what a tired glazing bar looks like and the fitters know which trim goes where without checking the drawing twice.

It also keeps the offer simple. There is one roof system, a short list of finishes, and three size bands on the prices page. You are not steered towards a bigger project because that is where the margin is.

Why the Comfort Calendar exists

Every customer asks the same question at the survey: how much cooler will it be? For a long time the honest answer was "a lot", which is not an answer. We got tired of guessing.

So we built a model of a typical room, 14 m² floor (4.0 m by 3.5 m), three glazed sides, south facing, and ran it against two full years of real hourly weather for 104 towns. It works out, hour by hour, how warm the room gets under polycarbonate, under glass and under a panel roof. Then we published the lot, free, as the Comfort Calendar, with the method written up in full alongside it. Nobody has to give an email address to use it.

Some of the results surprised us. The winter saving is real but modest, about 15% on heating, because the glass walls still lose heat. The summer change is the big one: the hours a year when the room is above 25°C fall from 1,320 to 317.

Where we work

Our survey and fitting teams cover 8 regions of England. The near you page lists them, and each one shows how its towns rank on the overheating league table. The warmest town in the model is Hounslow, with 1,501 too-warm hours a year under polycarbonate; the coolest is Buxton, with 949. Even the cool end of the list has a summer problem worth fixing.

104

towns modelled hour by hour

8

regions of England covered

76%

fewer too-warm hours under panels

How we work

• Prices in the open. Guide prices are on the site for anyone to read. The written price after the survey is fixed, with extras itemised.
• Nothing up front. The survey is free and nothing is paid before it.
• Numbers, not adjectives. When we say a room will be cooler, we say by how many degrees and for how many hours, and point you at the model so you can check.
• Tidy days. Dust sheets down at 8am, room hoovered before we leave, the old sheets loaded on our van and sent for recycling where they can be.
• Ten years of cover. An insurance backed guarantee on the panels, seals and workmanship, explained on the aftercare page.

What we will not do

Some habits in home improvement put people off the whole idea of getting a quote. We have dropped them.

What we say about the roof, and what we will not claim

A panel roof is a big change, but it is not magic, and we would rather you heard the limits from us. Our panel roof is rated at roughly 0.43 W/m²K, against about 2.4 for a tired 25 mm polycarbonate roof. In plain terms, about five times less heat gets through the roof each hour.

The walls are another matter. They stay glass, and glass still lets heat out on a January night and sun in on a June afternoon. So the room does not become an extension. What it becomes is a room that stops cooking in summer and stops needing a fan heater on full in winter. In our model, the heater you need on a freezing day shrinks from 1.7 kW to 1.1 kW, and the yearly heating bill on electric drops by about £65.

If anyone, including us, ever promises you a conservatory as warm as the lounge, ask to see the numbers.

Talk to us

The quickest way in is the quote journey: seven short questions and you see a guide price. If you would rather ask something first, email hello@warmlid.co.uk or use the contact page. We answer Monday to Friday 8am to 6pm and Saturday mornings.