Let the Sunshine In

By Missy Baxter
Special to The Courier-Journal
 

Gone are the summer days under a rusty tin roof in a creaky (albeit charming) porch swing, surrounded by patched screens. Today's trendy sunrooms, solariums and conservatories are definitely not your Grandma's screened-in porch.  Hot trends in three-season and year-round rooms include an array of amenities -- from sloped, shingled roofs and glass, gabled roofs to tile floors, decorative wall panels and floor-to-ceiling windows.  Finishing touches run the gamut from stylish, comfortable indoor-outdoor furniture to water fountains and plant watering systems.  Yet, despite the barrage of new designs and features, sunrooms remain an ideal spot for old-fashioned fun.

The new sunroom Brent Garrett and Glenda Marker recently added to their Louisville home has turned into the hottest spot "to just chill out" -- alone or with family and friends.  "We had a family get-together for Memorial Day, and everyone gravitated into the new sunroom," Marker said. "Everyone was going on … about how great it looks. We're really pleased with how it turned out."

The couple's 10-by-12 sunroom -- which features three walls of windows, decorative wall panels, laminate flooring, a shingled roof and a heating/cooling system -- is located on the second level of their home, above an existing patio.  The sunroom replaced a deck, which was reinforced to serve as the sunroom's foundation. The project cost about $15,000.

Their 14-year-old daughter, Katherine Garrett, spends time in the sunroom playing her cello and doing homework.

"It's not a huge, fancy sunroom like some of the ones on the market, but it added just enough extra space for us," Marker added. "From the outside, since the sunroom's roof is shingled, it blends in well with the rest of the house. We wanted a place to … read or just chill out ... to enjoy the sunlight without getting hot."

Homeowners shopping for a sunroom would be wise to brush up on a few definitions. For some help in sorting through the lingo, we turned to Dave Wade, owner of In-Joy Solaria of Buckner.

Sunrooms are usually constructed of frames of aluminum or decay-resistant woods that hold glass panels. "Most people think of a sunroom as having a solid or galvanized roof instead of a glass roof," Wade said.

Add a glass roof, and the sunroom becomes a solarium.

Conservatories come in all shapes and sizes, even octagonal. A conservatory is "like a solarium with a glass roof, but … the corners of the walls are not 90 degrees."

Three-season rooms do not include heating/cooling systems because they are designed to be used about nine months a year. "A lot of people will put ceiling fans in a three-season room to make them more comfortable," Wade said. "That's an efficient way to do it."

Since the area is not heated, a three-season room does not technically increase a home's square footage.

The footage can be counted in year-round rooms because they feature heating/cooling systems and insulated glass.

"Usually we put in a separate heating and cooling system for the new space, using a split-system electric heat pump," Wade said. "That definitely drives up the price somewhat, but it gives you a room you can enjoy any time of the year, and it adds to the home's footage."

One popular new trend, Wade says, is for homeowners on a limited budget to install a "convertible-type screen room" with special design features that make it easy to convert the space into a three-season or year-round room.

"They have screens, but they are in a regular window casing, which can be switched to glass when the homeowners can afford it," he said. "These have been really popular with a lot of the homebuilders in the area."

Typically made of aluminum or vinyl, factory-built sunrooms, solariums and conservatories are available in almost every price range and myriad styles -- from a modern solarium mimicking a greenhouse design to an elaborate Victorian-style conservatory. Some dealers also offer all-wood rooms.

There's a fine line between adding a sunroom and building a room addition, experts say. For homeowners who want to make sure their new space merges aesthetically with their existing home, one option is to hire a remodeling contractor to construct a stick-built room.  Not only does that allow more design flexibility, but it also boasts some other perks, such as the ability to tie in the new room to existing plumbing lines and heating/cooling ducts.

Thanks to technology, sunrooms have come a long way in recent years.  With double-pane, insulated glass and other improvements, many rooms are more energy-efficient, said Reginald Carter, corporate spokesman for Ohio-based Patio Enclosures Inc., which has installed sunrooms since 1966.  Carter said one of the newest improvements touted by Patio Enclosures is solar tinted glass that provides reduced glare and UV protection while reducing direct solar heat gain.