Conservatory air conditioning in Dartford

Can a glass room ever be comfortable at both ends of the year?

Far more than it is now, as long as you accept what glass is. Greenwich Observatory, the Met Office station nearest Dartford, records about 209 hours of sunshine in July and about 50 in December, and a conservatory feels every one of them. Blinds or a roof treatment come before any machinery, because they shrink the load the unit has to beat. Once that is done a reversible system copes with both the glare and the frost. Source: Met Office.

Why can't we size it from the floor plan?

Because the standard tables assume brick walls. iHeat's guidance is that large areas of glass, especially facing south, push up the capacity a room needs, and a conservatory is almost nothing but glass. A 15 square metre glazed room facing south-west can need the output a 25 square metre bedroom would. So we size from the glazed area, the compass direction, the roof type and whatever shading exists. The size guide gives a first estimate for ordinary rooms. Source: iHeat.

Where does a wall unit hang when there is no wall?

On the house. The wall the conservatory is built against is the one solid, load-bearing surface in the room, and in most cases the pipes can go straight through it, or along it, to an outdoor unit on the patio. If the room has a dwarf wall, a floor-standing console is another option. Either way the outdoor unit lands at the rear of the house, which inside a conservation area is also the position the planning rules treat most leniently. The borough's conservation areas are listed on our air conditioning in Dartford page.

Is a garden office any different?

Easier, if it is insulated, and harder in one respect: power. An outbuilding needs a supply rated for the unit, and running a new circuit to it is notifiable under Part P. Position matters too. A garden office usually stands a metre from the fence, so its outdoor unit sits close to the neighbour's patio and the sound calculation at their nearest window has to be done with care. Sources: IET; Grant UK.

Wouldn't a portable unit be enough?

Almost never in a glass room. A portable has to push its hot exhaust out through a hose, and a conservatory offers nowhere sensible to put one. Facing a south-west sun it works at full tilt all afternoon and still loses ground. We compare the two honestly in portable against fixed.