Many older greenhouses are glazed with horticultural glass. This breaks easily and whilst it is cheap to buy, it is difficult to transport and handle. This 3mm glass is overlapped on site and is very hard to keep clean as mould and algae gathers in the joints.

A cost effective and very popular alternative replacement greenhouse glazing is twinwall polycarbonate.  

Twin wall polycarbonate has the advantage that it is very light weight and easy to handle. The structure of the sheets, with two walls and flutes along its length, makes it many times stronger than glass and it is virtually shatterproof.  This structure also gives much better insulation than glass in the winter months. Make sure if you choose this for replacement that you include enough glazing clips to hold it securely in place on windier days.

At the Glazing Shop we offer three thicknesses of polycarbonate for your greenhouse. Th most popular 4mm and 6mm polycarbonate, but also 10mm whwere needed. 

Our twinwall polycarbonate is well priced and we cut the panels to your exact sizes totally Free of Charge. Whilst it is easy to cut on site, why bother if we do it for you!  

I have heard lots of good things about this glazing system from customers over the years. So when I ask myself 'how can I get warmer rooms this winter?' I know the answer straightaway. Ecoease secondary glazing is a magnetic system which creates a layer of static air between your original glass and your Ecoease glazing sheet. This air tight space creates an insulating layer between the cold outside glass and the warm secondary glazing sheet. Not only does this warm up your room considerably, if on all of the windows inthat room of course! It also gets rid of horrible condensation, leaving your windows dry and clear.

I've measured up for the made to measure version as I want an easy to fit and mess-less solution. I'll keep you posted! I am really confident that this will work for me from the feedback I get.

I have wanted a conservatory for a long time and with the right approach I can insulate with 35mm Heatguard polycarbonate to keep the heat in. So nights like tonight can be spent sitting comfortably in there relaxing with a book listening to the wind and rain ouside. Lets face it.... that's a great feeling, listening to the rain beating on the roof and the wind howling around, when you are nice and snug inside.

16mm triple polycarbonate and 25mm multiwall polycarbonate offer an ideal solution. The fluted structure of the sheets give excellent insulation, helping you to keep your fish safe through the coldest months. Enter your sizes on our website for an instant quote, or give us a call om 01536 446395 to discuss the benefits of each thickness.

But I’m sitting here writing this, in my garden, on my laptop with a nice cup of coffee and all is good….  How? I hear you ask? That’s the beauty of having a garden canopy in the UK.

My canopy is a Homestyle one which has a Lean to roof and I can honestly say that it has offered me more shelter than I would ever have believed. Over the last month I have sat under it on sunny days and the open sides have meant that it has been much more practical than a conservatory. However, on changeable days, or downright wet ones, a canopy can be a wonderful haven allowing you to still be out doors and not get wet.

I sometimes work from home and with my homestyle canopy, on days like today this is an absolute pleasure!

The short answer is a resounding YES in many applications but in others, it is an equally loud NO. Let’s look at how these break down

Where the answer is YES….

Application                                                  Why?

Conservatory roofs                                         Better Insulation against heat and cold

                                                                       Heat Guard and Bronze Opal dual coloured sheets are both available in 35mm                                                                                            polycarbonate sheets. These improve insulation considerably giving your                                                                                                        conservatory much more protection for year round use

                                                                       Insulated rooms give savings in heating bills in colder months

                                                                       Very strong - shatterproof

                                                                      Very rigid - wider spaces between glazing bars can be achieved saving you                                                                                                 money to offset some of the costs.

Commercial roofing applications                     Often larger areas where the bar spans would yield greater savings.        

                                                                         Stronger, more rigid sheets with lower UV ratings will more likely be specified for                                                                                               building control.                                        

Where the answer is NO

Application                                                        Why?

Canopies & carports                                        No need for extra insulation as these are open structures

Smaller unheated conservatories                    If they are not wanted for all year round use, it would be better to go for                                                                                                        25mm polycarbonate and save the difference.

There is an argument for a canopy in your garden all year round. Today we have a heat wave and surprise, surprise tonight it may rain!!

When your conservatory is just too hot, your canopy will really come into its own. A canopy will offer your shelter and shade whatever the weather.

A canopy is a fantastic addition to any garden. Especially on days like today when the heat is just too high to be indoors. The open sides of your canopy will allow the breeze to flow through and if you have made the great choice of opal polycarbonate in your roof, the worst of the rays will be deflected and a little bit of welcome shade can be found.

Don’t worry about summer showers forcing you inside halfway through your chapter…. Your canopy has got it covered!!

There is a large range of polycarbonate sheets on the market today. Which is the best for use in a conservatory? What is the best polycarbonate sheet thickness? What is the best colour? In the next couple of blogs, I will give you all the information you need to make the right choice for your project. Today we will look at polycarbonate sheet colours.

Your first thought may be the aesthetics of how you want your conservatory to look. Dependent upon the colour of windows and doors you may want something to match in your glazing bars and polycarbonate sheets. For example, if the main part of your conservatory is white, you may want white glazing bars and opal sheets. There are however, other factors you need to consider in the performance the available colours can bring. Insulation and light transmission are both very important. As is cost!

As polycarbonate sheets get thicker, the more colour options you have to choose from. You would never use the thinner twin wall sheets in a conservatory so I will start with 16mm thickness as a minimum.

16mm polycarbonate

This is really only suitable for smaller unheated conservatories where you are not really looking for any real insulation. Perhaps you are using it as a storage or utility area. In this thickness you are looking at clear, opal or bronze colours.

25mm polycarbonate

This is a very popular thickness for conservatories. You have the usual colours of clear, opal or bronze but the addition of dual colour sheets in Bronze Opal and HeatGuard.

35mm polycarbonate

This polycarbonate was created specifically for conservatories and is the most expensive but in most cases the best. You again have the standard colours of clear, opal or bronze but the addition of dual colour sheets in Bronze-Opal and HeatGuard.

So, lets look at these in more detail:

For more details on the specifications of each product look in our brochures section on the top line menu or give us a call on 01536 446395, we are always happy to help and advise.

My colleagues and I speak to a lot of customers who either have a conservatory they want to revamp or are building a new one. The number one priority, almost without fail, is to be able to use their conservatory as a room i.e. use it as much as possible throughout the year.

We would always recommend a polycarbonate sheet thickness of 25mm as a minimum, and 35mm polycarbonate if budget permits.

As a general rule, the thicker the polycarbonate sheet the lower U-values you can expect to achieve from it. The U-value is the amount of heat in units of W/m²·K that is transferred or conducted through a material, from hot to cold or vice versa. The lower the U-value the better the insulation performance will be. This is a particularly crucial factor to adhere to building standards / regulations.

Another benefit of using thicker sheets is that the thicker the polycarbonate sheet the stronger and more rigid it becomes. It can therefore, achieve greater spans between supports and you will need fewer glazing bars to hold it. This can give you savings which help to mitigate the cost of the thicker sheets. You also need to factor in better insulation = lower heating bills.

Our next blog will look at which colour polycarbonate sheet is best in your conservatory roof

During the summer months the temperature can rise quickly causing the heat in your conservatory to build up fast. Let’s face it, we don’t get on with our daily lives and chores thinking constantly about our conservatory overheating. In fact, we probably don’t think about it at all until we want to relax with a sandwich at lunchtime, or sit and have a nice cool drink in the evening looking out at the garden. By this time its probably at least a little on the hot side!

The good news is that you can automate your vents with climate control! This will automatically open them when it starts to get too hot, and if it rains – OK so that can happen in a Great British summer – can close them for you too.

An extra bit of good news is that the Glazing Shop will give you 10% off all of your roof ventilation accessories during the summer months.

Today we will look at another solution in the form of glazing materials which can help you to cool your conservatory in summer and keep the heat in during the colder months. 

A year round solution is to increase the thickness of your polycarbonate sheets whilst choosing a 'Heatguard' or 'Bronze Opal' sheet colour. These colour options are available in 25mm and 35mm sheet thicknesses and greatly reduce both the heat coming into your conservatory in the summer, as well as the heat being lost in the winter. 

A Heatguard sheet has a silvery anthracite grey upper surface and an opal inner.  Heat guard is a special treatment that is built into the top side of the polycarbonate sheet. The internal opal face of the polycarbonate sheet gives excellent reflective internal light.

Bronze-Opal is again a dual coloured polycarbonate sheet, this time with a bronze outer surface, that is particularly good for brown conservatories. It also has an opal tinted inner surface giving excellent reflective inner light.

Both of these sheets serve to reflect the sun’s rays helping to reduce heat build-up within the roof by up to 50% and to keep the heat in when it is colder.

The Glazing shop offers Heatguard and Bronze Opal in 25mm and 35mm sheet thicknesses. We also offer roof vents for both of these sheet thicknesses as well as for glass units. You can buy online or call us on 01536 446395, we are always happy to help and advise. 

Today we will look at conservatory ventilation. The cheapest and easiest solution is to add a conservatory roof vent which allows you to let some of the heat eascape through your roof. These roof vents are available for glass and polycarbonate roofs and can be added to new or existing conservatory roofs. The Glazing shop offers vents in a range of colours which suit a variety of glazing materials and thicknesses. They are bar to bar vents which means they fit tight to your glazing bars rather than being fitted within the sheets themselves to prevent leaks. This type of roof ventilation can be manually or automatically operated and you can get 10% all roof vent accesories from the Glazing shop throughout the hot summer months.

Our 16mm and 25mm polycarbonate sheeting are ideal to protect your pond, and they are a popular solution to this issue.  You can enter your measurements on our website and find out the cost quickly and easily. We are happy to discuss bespoke requirements such as unusual measurements.

For more information, please see our polycarbonate sheets overview or feel free to contact us and discuss your needs.

Start the New Year with a warmer, drier house!

As we move into the colder months of winter, it is often noticeable that more condensation occurs on windows, and older properties feel colder.  Much of this can be due to poorly-fitted windows, but often it is simple due to single glazing on character houses.  Ecoease secondary glazing can help!

Their magnetic secondary glazing system can be used on character and listed properties as it is classed as removable or temporary glazing, therefore planning permission is not required.  Not only does it come at a fraction of the cost of double glazing, it is also better at stopping heat loss, reduces noise and eliminates condensation.  The PET panels used in the magnetic glazing system are inherently warmer than glass, which simply means that when warm air meets the surface of the Ecoease panel, it does not condense into water droplets as it does on the cold surface of glass.

You can find out more about Ecoease secondary glazing and its benefits on our website and if you order at the Glazing Shop, we can offer you 10% off! Get in touch for more details.

Where polycarbonate is used as a roof sheet it is nearly always “multiwall” (the only major exception to this is where solid polycarbonate sheets are used for Overdoor canopies). Multiwall sheets are extruded to produce a number of internal walls which create chambers within the sheet. The number of chambers differs depending upon which sheet thickness you are using.

4mm, 6mm and 10mm thick polycarbonate sheets normally have just two walls

16mm polycarbonate sheets have three walls, creating two chambers

25mm Polycarbonate comes in a variety of designs but the most popular has an “X” type structure with 7 internal walls

32mm and 35mmPolycarbonate sheets tend to have 7 horizontal walls

What thickness of sheets should be used for which projects

Replacement Glazing

4mm, and 6mm Polycarbonate sheets tend to be used for small scale glazing jobs such as replacing broken glass in Greenhouses or for providing an insulated cover for Koi fish ponds. It is light easy to handle and can be cut to size using a sharp knife.

Carports or Lean to Roofs

As described above polycarbonate is commonly used as a replacement for PVC corrugated sheets that have reached their life expectancy and have begun to degrade and break down. In such situations the old glazing is normally replaced using 10mm or 16mm Polycarbonate sheets. These will need to be fitted using some form of Glazing Bar system where the glazing bar will screw down onto the existing timber supports. The two common methods are using a PVC Rafter Bar or an Aluminium Rafter Bar.

Conservatory Roofs

Multiwall polycarbonate became popular with the rise in sales of conservatories. During the 1980’s Wickes and B&Q (and others) produced cheap conservatories which had polycarbonate in their roofs. These were initially glazed with 16mm polycarbonate (some even had 10mm polycarbonate) in the roof but as the industry matured thicker versions of polycarbonate were used, the most popular being 25mm polycarbonate and then 32mm and 35mm sheets.

If you are replacing panels on an old conservatory then it is wise to replace like with like, so measure the panels you already have and order new ones of the same thickness. Where you have a Victorian, Edwardian or P Shaped conservatory the panels will need to be cut into shapes. Unless you feel confident measuring the panels (they will need to be removed from the conservatory and placed on the ground to measure) then it would be wise to seek the help of a professional.

The reason the conservatory industry moved to using thicker polycarbonate sheets was because the thicker sheets with their increased number of internal walls gave better sound and heat insulation. If you want to upgrade your own polycarbonate sheets to thicker versions then the whole roof will need to be taken off and replaced with a new conservatory roof as your existing glazing bars will only accommodate the size of polycarbonate used. Thicker sheets require different glazing bars. This is obviously a more expensive option to replacing like with like but can result in an “as new” conservatory.

Other Glazing Applications

Because polycarbonate is so light, strong and versatile there really is no end to the type of use it can be put to. The thinner sheets (4mm, 6mm and 10mm) are light and easy to cut and handle so are as useful for internal glazing jobs as they are external ones. The thicker polycarbonate sheets 25mm, 32mm and 35mm tend to be used externally for roofing applications, the thicker the sheet the better the heat and sound insulation. 16mm polycarbonate is light enough to be used for small jobs but also is also useful for certain roofing jobs.

At the end of the day if you are unsure which sheet you should use in a particular application then call us on 01536 446395 or email us on sales@theglazingshop.co.uk where our experienced staff will be pleased to advise you. 

Now is the time to prepare for the coming of Winter and one of the most important things that you need to look at is the management of rainwater on your property, in other words, gutters, drainpipes and outlets.

Gutters need to be cleaned of falling leaves or they will block the movement of rainwater, overflow and potentially cause water to seep into your property. Faulty items are easy to replace but first you need to identify what type of gutter system you have: half round gutter, square gutter,.

Half Round Guttering            Square Guttering

It’s important that particular attention is paid to the union brackets (joints), outlets, stop ends and angle pieces that are fitted to gutters as the rubber seals in these can deteriorate over a period of time and if this happens then they will start to leak.

Square Guttering

    Union Brackets                           Outlets                            Stop Ends                           Angles

 Round Guttering

     Union Brackets                        Outlets                                 Stop Ends                            Angles

You also need to look for problems in your drainpipes and outlets. Drainpipes come in two designs, Round and Square.

     Square Down Pipe                         Round Down Pipe

Full Guttering System to use with Half Round, Square, Ogee and Deep                      Full Guttering System to use with Square and Ogee

You should check the downpipes by running water down them to see if there are any blockages. If the water does not come out smoothly then dismantle the parts remove the blockage and re-assemble the parts. It’s easy to replace worn or damaged components.

 Once your rainwater system is running smoothly you can cut down on any ongoing maintenance by preventing debris and leaves clogging up your gutters and drainpipes. A clever product that helps do this is the Hedgehog which stops debris getting into the gutter but still allows water to pass unhindered. Installing the Hedgehog is simple (it is simply a matter of laying it in the gutter) but will save you a lot of work later especially if you have a number of trees close to your property.

 Click here to see a comprehensive list of all our Rainwater System products, or call 0345 688 3694.