Tips for Building a Better DIY Conservatory Base
The foundations or the base of your conservatory is without a doubt the most important part of the structure. For the most part, it keeps your conservatory stable throughout the years. It is quite easy to build the foundations of a conservatory, and you can do it with a reliable DIY conservatory base.
There are dosens of guides on how to build a DIY conservatory base, all of which you can find whilst searching the Internet. Many of these guides, however, touch only on the basics and gloss over the finer details of creating a base for your conservatory. If you have minimal knowledge on how it is actually done, you may end up confused and frustrated about it, and the quality of your conservatory base may suffer as well.
How do you build a DIY conservatory base? This is not one of those guides, unfortunately, but you can easily find such a guide on the Internet. What this article will tell you are some of the finer details that many guides fail to mention.
The Importance of a DIY Conservatory Base
Many people seem to think that it is not necessary to build a base for their conservatory, much less a DIY conservatory base. Their justification for this seems to arise from the fact that the materials now commonly used for conservatories are lightweight - uPVC, plastic roofing and glased walls. Because these materials all weigh lightly, they would only need a steel frame or slab base for the flooring to anchor the conservatory down.
The problem with this kind of thinking is that it does not give much consideration for the movement of the ground upon which the conservatory is built. The ground does move occasionally, and if you do not build a proper DIY conservatory base, your conservatory may end up sustaining structural damage or even falling after a number of years.
You can prevent such damage to an obviously important investment as a conservatory by building a proper DIY conservatory base. If you want your conservatory to last for as long as your house remains standing, you should build the right foundation that your conservatory requires.
Setting Up Your DIY Conservatory Base
Given that a base is important for the life and durability of your conservatory, it is not enough that your conservatory has a base. When you build your DIY conservatory base, the foundation should be set up properly to ensure that your conservatory will remain standing over the years.
The work involved in setting up your DIY conservatory base properly includes cleaning up the area you will use for your conservatory. You need to remove all the vegetation and topsoil on the area, as well as dig the trenches until you reach the subsoil level of the ground.
Trees and Your DIY Conservatory Base
The view of the trees and the landscaping in your garden may be the reason why you want to build a conservatory. But your trees may present an obstacle to the stability of your conservatory if they grow very near it. If you see tree roots in the soil after you have dug the area you will be using as your DIY conservatory base, you can do two things.
Your first option is that you can design your DIY conservatory base in such a way that the growth of the tree roots is bridged. This will prevent the tree roots from exerting too much pressure on the foundation of your conservatory, thus preventing any structural damage to the foundation even as they grow through the years.
Your second option is that you can have the trees whose roots grow under the area where you will build your DIY conservatory base removed. This may be a painful and problematic decision to make, depending on how you feel about having large trees on your property. In any case, you would need to consult an arboriculturist before you remove a tree on your property or its roots.
Clay Heave and Your DIY Conservatory Base
If ever you decide to remove a tree on your property so you can build your DIY conservatory base and your grounds are rich with clay, you have to protect the foundation of the conservatory against possible clay heave. Clay heave comes up when the clay layer of the ground becomes oversaturated with moisture, which in turn happens when there is not enough vegetation to suck that moisture up.
Are your grounds near the conservatory susceptible to clay heave? In this case, you will need to provide a cushion around your DIY conservatory base that will protect it from the sudden rise on the ground level due to heaving clay.
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