Tanglewood Conservatories Blog – Alan Stein's Writings about Custom Conservatory Design and More

Yesterday, Nancy and I visited with some friends who are planning a conservatory addition to their suburban home. We met with them and the general contractor they had selected to work on the project which includes the custom conservatory, a swimming pool enclosure for an endless pool located below the new conservatory and an exercise room adjacent to the indoor swimming pool enclosure.

When we arrived, they were struggling with a thorny planning issue involving the floor heights of the new rooms below the conservatory.

Since the existing home has several steps going down into the living room which is the room the new conservatory will be attached to, to achieve adequate head height in the swimming pool enclosure below, the floor level would end up being below the level of a small but charming outdoor patio they loved.

No one liked the idea of having to step up from floor of the pool enclosure and exercise rooms to get outside to the patio. This would create a potential problem with water tending to run into the new rooms so a number of elaborate schemes were being discussed to alleviate the problem when Nancy and I arrived.

Of importance to our friends was that the floor levels of the new lower rooms, the swimming pool enclosure and the exercise room be on the same level with the outside patio so that the spaces flowed smoothly one into the other. The concept was that all three spaces would feel as if they were extensions of each other.

We joined the discussion, looked at the outside of the house where the patio was and thought, maybe a simple solution would be to just lower the patio a bit. After all, it was not a large patio and some of the brickwork looked like it might need repair anyway. With lots of other construction and excavation going on right next to it, it might need to get rebuilt anyway.

After some discussion, we all agreed that was the best solution as it would preserve the simplicity of the design concept of the three spaces.

Now, on to the conservatory part of the project.

Alan