Sunroom design in Redlands CA - a room that stays comfortable in summer

Most people who call us want more usable space off the back of the house, often over a patio that's too hot to sit on by mid-afternoon, and they want it built right the first time. If you're starting from a slab with an old cover over it, a patio-to-sunroom conversion may end up being part of the plan. The price moves mostly with the size of the room, whether it's heated and cooled, and whether it needs a new foundation or can sit on what you have, while the schedule mostly turns on how quickly those choices get settled and how long the building office takes with the plans. My written estimate lists what's in it and what isn't, so you see your own figure before you decide anything.

I start the way I did when I framed houses, with what holds the room up. I measure, check the slab, deck or ground the room will sit on, look at the house wall and roofline the new roof has to tie into, and ask how you plan to use the room, because a spot for morning coffee and a home office in August need different things. From there we pick the room type, then plan shade and window choice together so the room stays comfortable in summer. East and west glass gets extra thought, since an overhang does little against low morning and evening sun, so on those sides we look harder at the glass itself and at where the windows go. We also plan how the base sheds water and how the tracks are sealed now, while those details are still easy to get right.

Design is the planning half of the job. Once you're happy with the plan, most of these rooms get built as sunroom additions tied into the house, and if you'd like a frame that needs little upkeep, we also build vinyl sunrooms from the same kind of plan.

The city's Building division issues permits for residential additions and for patios, decks and other small residential work, and its permit list names additions, garages, carports, patios and decks but not sunrooms, so which permit your room falls under is a question for the Building division. We take care of the permits the building office asks for on our jobs, and the contract says in writing that we're handling them. On a corner lot in a residential district, the street side yard has to be at least as deep as the district's required front yard and no less than fifteen feet in any case, so if you want the room on that side, we design it to stay inside that line from the start. California's energy code also sets energy, water efficiency and indoor air quality requirements for additions, and its standards for windows, doors and walls depend on the climate zone a house sits in, so we pick glass and insulation with those standards in mind.

We're based in Redlands and work in many of the cities around it in San Bernardino and Riverside counties. A lot of the houses we see have an older covered patio slab off the back, and we run into the same thing on jobs in Highland and Yucaipa, so checking that slab is usually the first thing I do.