No Conservatories Near Pipes

Just when you thought the changes affecting our industry were done, dusted and out of the way for the next few years, here comes another one!


From 1st October this year, it is going to be against the law for conservatories or orangeries to be built over or near to sewers. The reason? From 1st October all privately owned sewers are going to be adopted by the local water companies. It is estimated that there are about 125,000 miles of privately owned sewers, affecting about 10 million households.


What is the reason for this change? The Government want the water companies to be responsible for all the sewers in the country. The companies will then be responsible for any repair work, so that the homeowner doesn't have to foot the bill.


But this is going to create some logistical problems when it comes to extensions, conservatories or orangeries. You're not going to be allowed to install trap doors in the flooring as far I'm aware. In some cases you will be able to re-route the pipework away from the work area to get round the ruling. The downside to the customer having the work done will be the extra cost. It won't be a great deal extra, but in a time of austerity people are penny pinching down to the nearest pound!


But there will be some cases where re-routing the pipework just isn't an option i.e. if the structure is going to take up a lot of the garden space and it doesn't leave much room for the pipes. Hopefully these circumstances will make up the minority of cases.


So, get your plans in, start the building work and get your projects complete before the start of October!


A helpful Q and A site can be found here.

Work We've Done Recently

I thought I might share with your some of the work we have a done recently:

The above is a small Rosewood Victorian conservatory we did a couple of weeks ago for some very good customers of ours!


The next two are images of some of the first windows with mock sash horns we have installed. I was a bit unsure what to expect when I first saw them but when I got on site they looked pretty impressive. They are only a small feature but they do add the extra character that PVCu windows sometimes need.


The bottom two are black composite doors and side lights which we have installed in the last ten days. Black is one of the most popular colours we are selling at the moment. And one thing which matches the colour well are the glass designs the customers have picked.


Since changing composite door suppliers, we have had a massive surge in composite door sales. We are able to give customers a lot more choice of designs, colours and glass options. We have also been able to bring ourselves in line with the majority of the industry in terms of cost.

Conservatories On The Slide

Searching on Google Trends I know doesn't give a 100% accurate picture of what people are buying. But it does give a good indication as to what people are interested in. Below is a Trends comparison between 'double glazing' and 'conservatories'. Both of which show a steady decline, 'conservatories' more marked than 'double glazing'.

The blue line which indicates double glazing, shows a small increase in the latter part of the year. Conservatories however show the complete opposite. 


The key is going to be how companies can grab the remaining market share in what is still a rapidly shrinking market.


I'd say we are currently in the transition period between conservatories and orangeries, and the amount of time left for conservatories I'd say was between 3-5 years. Will Conservatory Outlet re-brand to Orangery Outlet!?!

The Ideals Of An Outdoor Showsite

I'm a great believer that if you are going to display conservatories, they need to be outside. Having them outside means the customers gets the true feel as to what to expect from their new conservatory as they are going to be exposed to the weather.

Companies can boast dozens of conservatories on display, but if they are inside, surrounded by artificial light and air conditioning, I believe customers aren't getting the true showsite experience. They are in their own climate, protected, when the real thing is going to be subjected to all sorts of extremes of weather.

For example, how do you demonstrate the benefits of the heatguard roof inside?! We have a conservatory with a heatguard roof, next to one without, and that allows us to show properly the difference between roofs, and the obvious benefits. We don't have the biggest showroom, but because it's outdoors, customers often tell us that they can get the true picture by coming to our outdoor showsite as opposed to other indoor ones.

Yet More Proof The Conservatory Market Is Struggling

I've found out today that yet another conservatory roof manufacturer is struggling to keep their heads above water due to dwindling conservatory numbers. I'm not going to mention the company name or talk specific numbers but they have had to lay off staff. I know much more than this but for legal reasons I don't want to go any further.

People continue to say that the conservatory market is salvagable. The problem is that conservatories don't have a positive reputation due to lack of care and poor product quality. Couple that with only 100,000 installations last year, companies are going to be grabbing at an increasingly shrinking market share thats not going to be worth very much in the near future.

Businesses need to start diversifying their product range if they are to be able to pay the bills in the future. Conservatories provide companies with big chunks of their cashflow due to the larger nature of their contracts. Businesses will need to find alternatives to plug the gap which conservatories are about to start leaving.

They Think It's All Over!

RCG has made a very interesting and relative point in his last post on his blog. Conservatories have gone out of fashion.

According to his sources, 270,000 conservatories were fit in the peak year of 2004, compare that then to last year where only 106,000 were fit.

The last figure has to be analysed in two ways. The first is that there was the worst recession for 70 years going on at that time, so sales of anything and everything were down. The other way to look at it, as RCG has done, is to face up to the fact that conservatories seem to have gone out of fashion.

Conservatories are in essence white plastic boxes filled with glass. They overheat, get too cold and require lots of cleaning. That's why extensions have always been the reliable alternative, plus they match the existing house more easily. Conservatories seem to have been a fad for the last 10-15 years. The first wave of people have had them fit, not looked after them and they have been allowed to deteriorate. What sort of image will that promote to people looking to extend their home?

Over the last few years, people attitudes have changed. Conservatories were once seen as a luxury, so much so that it almost turned into a necessity. But now, with the onset of WER's and a bigger emphasis on energy efficiency, windows and doors have become the more immediate and beneficial home improvement, and so have swamped the demand for conservatories.

Conservatories don't improve a home's energy efficiency, nor does it save a customer money on their heating bills. In times like these they are the priorities, and new windows can provide the solutions to these problems.

This rapidly shrinking market has got to worry the companies whose main source of revenue and marketing strategy is conservatories. I have always wondered about the sustainability of the conservatory market as it has been reducing in size significantly over the last few years. 

Some may say you have to innovate, but how far can you innovate a conservatory really? Change it's colour? It's still a 'plastic box screwed on the side of the house', no matter what colour you make it.

Put a veranda in front? A specialist item not many people will want to pay for as it has no real benefit other than a nicy little fancy extra feature. 

Add extra brickwork and call it an orangery? You still have to have a conservatory style roof, big windows and bi-folding doors. So why would people go to the expense of an orangery when they may as well have a full extension.

The problem we face here is that we operate in a market (conservatort market) which is driven by fashions and fads. Accessories always have, and that is exactly what a conservatory is, an accessory. 

The more reliable and dependable area of our industry will always be windows and doors. Be it timber, aluminium or PVCu, they will always need changing in the long term, and thats where most of the money is going to be in the future.

Conservatory Market Still In Deep Trouble

We found evidence today that the conservatory industry is still struggling massively at the moment.

We searched on the Leeds Council website and found that last week, for the whole of Leeds and it's encompassing areas, only 1 conservatory got passed. No matter what time of year it is, that is dire. Consumer confidence may be rising, but clearly not enough to drag the conservatory market out of the mire. Even RCG has recently admitted to me that the industry is in a seriously bad way.

Of course the other explanation could be that companies are putting up conservatories illegally, without planning permission. If that is the case, councils may be very busy in the future taking lots down. But I doubt that most companies aren't that reckless as to put up a whole structure just to risk it being taken down again.

The next major hump in the road is going to be the revisions to Part L. It looks like conservatories are going to come under stricter energy efficiency regulations. The companies who aren't tuned to fitting 'C' rated windows as a minimum now, are going to find it just has hard when it comes to the efficiency of conservatories.

Don't Get Too Carried Away!

While the economy as a whole may be on the road to recovery, it is clear to see from the latest report from Palmer Market Research that our sector is far from out of the wood yet (despite all my positivity in come of my recent posts!).

The window and door market as a whole in 2008 dropped by 17%, giving the market a value of £4.32 billion. The market, according to PMR, is not likely to recover until 2011-12.

Conservatories have taken the biggest hit, dropping 27% in 2008, with a predicted further 25% drop in 2009.

For windows, in 2008 the market slumped 14%, and is expected to drop a further 16% in 2009.

Installation values have been predicted to drop 18% this year and 6% for 2010.

Areas like composite doors and secondary glazing have seen a surge, but these niche areas provide no real drive to bring the market as a whole out of the doldrums. The best thing for companies to do at the minute is to keep the mindset of recession, keep the effort levels up, and drive on as if times were as hard as they were 6-9 months ago. That way we don't slacken off because we think things are getting better, we now always have to assume that things could always get worse, very quickly. It keeps us on our toes and businesses operating as efficiently and productively at all times. 

SIGN THE WINDOWS SCRAPPAGE SCHEME PETITION NOW!: http://www.petitions.number10.gov.uk/windowscrappage

DIY Conservatories

I've been following a great new blog at www.conservatoryblogger.wordpress.com, and he raises the subject of DIY conservatories.

Looking at the cost angle there is an advantage there. But for me there are many things that can go wrong when installing a conservatory yourself.
Firstly the product, in order for Joe Bloggs to install a conservatory themselves, surely can't be made of much. I suspect there would be very little in terms of reinforcement, affecting badly the overall quality of the product. Secondly planning permission. With planning very often a grey area, two calls to the same planning department to inquire if the proposed conservatory would need planning permission can often lead to two different answers. Joe Bloggs will not want to install something illegally I'm sure! The next problem I envisage would be the fitting of the conservatory and the scenario if something went wrong with the product. Now the problem this industry has is that there are plenty of people out there who think they can fit windows, doors and conservatories well, and can't. With a conservatory being such a large item to install, the person that would be installing would need to have some good background knowledge on how to fit them. I'm assuming also that no guarantee would be supplied with a DIY conservatory, so if something was wrong with the conservatory, the downside would be that it would cost the customer to buy the relevant part/parts to replace those that may be faulty.

These are just a few of my main views on the disadvantages of DIY conservatories. From my point of view, it would only benefit the customer, long and short term, to spend a bit more money to make sure that professional fitters install their conservatory. With that, they would get a guarantee, a much better quality of product (depending where you chose to buy from of course!) and providing that the company is a reputable one, there will be no discrepancies when it comes to planning permission.

Tactics

I stumbled on another double glazing blog the other day, abbreviated its called RCG. They managed to get hold of another companies quote, the company is called B & P Windows. I'm unaware if B & P know if RCG has a copy of their quote they gave to this particular customer.


A comment was left on RCG's post, explaining that you can't energy rate a conservatory, therefore making an 'energy rated conservatory' impossible, implying B & P Windows has misled the customer.


I failed to find any mention on the quote of energy rated conservatories. Which brings me on to why I'm writing. The tactic of using other companies' quotes, picking them apart to try and get one up on the competition, in my eyes shows a lack of quality on the other company. Shouldn't companies try and focus on their own quotes and paperwork, rather than pick apart others?


I don't think much gain will have been had by RCG, if the extract he posted included something which said 'energy rated conservatories', then maybe he would have a had point.


Companies should stick to focusing on their own interests, and not to bother too much with what others are doing.


Must say though, B & P Windows must be an annoyance to RCG, because B & P Windows is mentioned twice on his blog now, they must be a stubborn thorn!