Conservatory Doctor - Why does every town seem to have one?

Look at any small claims court records or customer complaints at the CAB or Trading Standards, most building complaints relating to house extensions are for conservatories. It is my theory that is this down to the fact that most are constructed without any Building Control supervision or client advisor such as their own house extension designer or architect to maintain some form of basic standard or quality control.

Not all Conservatory suppliers, installers or manufactures are tarred with the same brush. Many offer well organised superior levels of product and service but regretfully many do not. The main reason for this in my opinion is nothing to do with cowboy builders but more to do with sub-divisions of each work element and the lack of onsite management and control.

In a nutshell, if you let a conservatory installer who is usually a sub-contractor on a price, install the foundations, base and framework of the conservatory without adequate supervision for maintaining quality control, they will take shortcuts. Their whole motivation for your house extension conservatory is to get in and get out as quick as possible for the price being offered by the conservatory suppliers.

On site management supervision is key but this very rarely happens due to cost cutting. Therefore 50% of all conservatories built within their first two years will suffer from a defect. The two major areas of complaints are usually from adverse settlement due to shallow foundations pulling the abutments away from the original property and leaks caused by poorly installed glazed roof panels.

Hence the arrival of the conservatory doctor which I think was spawned from some TV home improvement show but the term does explain what the service provider does with a little lateral thinking. These people are usually ex-conservatory installers and glazers and know how it should be done. Most experienced and long term Conservatory Doctors will sort out your problem for you within a one day visit simply because they know what they are doing and is often preferable to some low level dodgy European being called in on minimum wage by the original conservatory supplier.

Sorry to be cynical like this but these are typical experiences of many years looking at defective conservatories. Long live the Conservatory Doctor provide they are genuine.