Building a conservatory from scratch in Bucks

There is an awful lot more to building a conservatory from scratch than buying a ready made kit from a DIY shop and tacking a lean to conservatory on the side of a house. Firstly, the new HIPS packs require all new Conservatories to have a Certificate of Proposed Lawful Development or an approved letter from the local authority granting Planning Permission. Without the correct legal documentation, adding a conservatory to your home may not add the value you would hope and expect!

Hazlemere Conservatories will not start building a conservatory until the appropriate paper work is in place, which not only ensures all the work we carry out will never need to be removed, but gives our clients peace of mind. Furthermore Hazlemere’s experienced staff deal with all the planning issues as part of the process, designing, drawing and submitting all the appropriate plans for each new conservatory. Local planning authorities also expect to see scaled sectional drawings for the foundations, as well as elevations etc.

Earlier in 2009, one of my neighbours ordered a Hazlemere conservatory, having seen sight of the drawings produced after a full site survey by Hazlemere’s in-house dedicated conservatory surveyor Philip Marsden. Phil takes detailed measurements, notes and photographs of each site, checking existing drains, floor levels etc. before finalising the design to be presented to the client for approval, prior to submission to the local council. Having obtained approval from my neighbour and secured an order, Phil heard in April 2009, as part of the service Hazlemere provides to each of it’s new conservatory customers, that Hazlemere Conservatories had been successful in obtaining a Certificate of Proposed Lawful Development to build a conservatory in Beaconsfield for my grateful neighbours.

My neighbours new conservatory was subsequently constructed of strong white aluminium, has a brick dwarf wall, includes French Doors and has a Pilkington Activ Blue Self Cleaning Glass double glazed roof. This three faceted Victorian style conservatory is unique in that my neighbour very kindly agreed to allow Hazlemere to film its construction from beginning to end.

Hazlemere started work on site by marking out the position of the conservatory from the scaled plans approved by South  Bucks District Council Planning Department. Once the site had been marked out the trenches were dug for the concrete conservatory foundations by Hazlemere Conservatories own ground-workers using the Hazlemere Group’s small mechanical digger.

Hazlemere kept a digital photographic and video record of each stage of building this aluminium Victorian conservatory from scratch, the plan then being to produce a short video documenting every step that you should take when building a conservatory. The conservatory project was completed in time to allow this Hazlemere conservatory customer to benefit from their new conservatory throughout the Summer.