So, you’re considering opening up the heart of your home and extending your living space into a beautiful orangery.  Before you make your decision, you probably want to know what you’re getting yourself into. In this blog, we’re going to explain what an orangery is how we at Rococo would go about building yours.

Design

The design process is one of the most important steps. It’s where you come face-to-face with what the finished product will look like and make the decision to change or keep designs.

At Rococo, the first part of the design process is getting to know you, how you live and what you’re looking to get from the orangery. We’ll listen to your aspirations and goals, and design the orangery to exceed them, whilst carefully considering the existing design of your home. We use over 20 years of experience to design you the orangery you need, whilst using products to their best potential and avoiding common regulatory pitfalls. Our goal is to delight the customer and add real value to their home.

Once you’re happy with the designs, we get moving into the planning permission phase.

Planning Permission

Planning permission isn’t the hardest or most complicated part of the process, but there are plenty of areas that could trip you up if you’re not careful, or experienced in the subject. We deal with countless applications, so when you build an orangery with Rococo, we simply manage all the paperwork for you. This way, your application is faster and more likely to succeed.

Working Drawings

When planning permission is approved, we begin putting together all of the paperwork required by trades, surveyors and councils. Working drawings encompasses a whole raft of different technical drawings required for building an orangery. We produce heat loss calculations, to predict and reduce the effect that the changes will have to the thermal efficiency of your home. We’ll register for building regulation approval and prepare all structural calculations. By the end of this process, you’ll have a folder containing all of the info, paperwork and “blueprints” required to proceed with the build.

Foundations

Before we’ve even completed the previous step, we get the build team prepared to start laying the foundations. The second the paperwork is completed and approved, we can get to work. The team has already been briefed on the build. By not waiting until the working drawings are produced before briefing the teams, we save valuable time in the build process.

Orangery foundations are laid in the same way that buildings and extensions are built. Building regulations dictate the size and depth of the foundation, depending on your home’s soil type, drainage and surrounding trees.

This entire process is handled entirely by your dedicated project manager, from pencil to paper, shovel to ground, and last brick to final tile. There’s nothing for you to worry about.

Brickwork

Next is brickwork, building the walls with spaces for doors and windows. This is probably the first moment where you get an actual feel for the scale of the room you’re building. The walls are built to the same specifications that the rest of the building adheres to, including insulation. See our blog, “how to keep an orangery warm” for more information.

Roof and Structure

Next, your orangery gets a roof. Your project manager will handle the delivery of the roofing materials, lantern and schedule contractors for a seamless installation. The roof structure is custom built to your orangery’s specification using steel and the roof lantern is installed by our accredited glazers. The installed roof is unlike a conservatory, in that it’s solid like your home’s. The roof is heavily insulated and the roof lantern is double (or triple) glazed and thermally broken to keep it warm in the winter and cool in the summer.

Glazing

Again, our team of accredited glazers are scheduled by your project manager to start work precisely when needed. Each window and door is installed with precision and care. Since day 1, your orangery has been designed with these quality products in mind, and is installed with similar experience and care. Simple quality features that you won’t find elsewhere, like not having to step up or down from inside to outside, and no doorframes to obstruct your step.

This is the final step in building you the perfect orangery. The build process takes less than a few months and the whole of it is managed for you. No scheduling builders, architects or surveyors, we do it all for you.

Click here to see how building with Rococo compares to doing it yourself.