Sunroom question.

[Oldcountryboy]

Anyone have a sunroom added on their house? What kind of a roof does it have? The clear plastic paneling or a regular roof?

I'm getting ready to remodle my house so I can add a sun room on the back.(southside) I want to be able to lounge around in it, grow plants, and not burn up, yet it I want it to generate enough heat so that I can vent some of the heat into the house to help keep the house warm during the wintry days.

Any recommendations? Very much appreciated.

[Ed Norman]

We built ours last summer. We got 4X10' 8mm double wall lexan sheets on closeout. We laid down 2" of foam board and poured concrete for the floor on top of it. Then we went up with 4X4 posts and the lexan fits between them. The roof is 2X6 with fibreglas insulation. Inside is a beadboard ceiling, with painted steel roof. We have just a few inches of eave so the sun can shine in.

Right now, the sun goes directly over the roof and the insulation keeps the temp down. Today it got up to the low 90s and inside the room it was about 110. Prop the doors open at each end and it is fine.

In the winter, the sun is low on the horizon and shines right in. It can be 10 below zero and sunny, and the room will be 80 degrees. We open the house front door and window which are both inside the room, and let the free heat spill in. Sometimes we set a fan in the doorway to blow in more.

when we poured the floor, we also put in radiant heat tubing in 4 different runs. All those come out of the floor underneath the steps. Some day I will get around to plumbing them up with an old RV water heater and we will have a heated slab to start plants in the early spring.

Some day I will also finally set up my thermostat controlled fan and return duct to blow heat to the back of the house in the winter.

We did ever bit of work our selves and it wasn't too expensive.

I stuck a dead end piece of tubing in the cement for the radiant heat thermostat to go in later. For now, I stick a cheap indoor outdoor thermometer probe in there and it tells me how warm the slab is all winter. It usually stays above 50, sometimes more, unless it stays cold and cloudy for a week.

[Shrek]

My sunroom has the house roof extended over it and attic access. The 14 full length windows and french door on the north south and east sides produce adequate sunlight to use it for greenhouse gardening and passive heat collection.

To direct some western sun into it , I mounted a couple mirror configurations in the northeast and south east corners to reflect into the room when I want more sunlight in there.

[Quint]

I'm not sure if you would call it a sunroom or not but on a house I had as home and later a rental I had a room with 4 sides of glass.

I built what could be considered a room addition with an insulated ceiling but without standard walls. I used engineered beams to span the sides and front which left me with just a small 2 ft x 2 ft corner without glass. In the openings I put well insulated and energy efficient glass french doors.

I had intended to use it as a three season porch or something but it turned out so warm and nice I carpeted it, blew out the connecting wall and made it an addition to the house. Used it as a dining room and sitting area. Also added two good sized skylights. The window/doors were really expensive and the skylights weren't cheap either. The room ended up costing quite a bit more than I had intended.

I kinda miss that room and wish i had one like it on my house here on the homestead.

[WisJim]

We built a 12 by 24 or so sunroom to replace a deteriorated porch over 10 years ago. We used insulated glass (like patio door replacements) that we got a good deal on. It has a door on the east side, and a casement window on both the east and west ends. Also has 2 skylights that we wish we hadn't used, as they leak no matter what we do. It has a regular shingle roof with an overhange designed to shade the south glass on June 21st, to avoid overheating in the summer, and that works well.



We put tubing for radiant heat in the floor slab when we built it, even though we don't have it hooked up, and the floor slab is also tiled with ceramic tile. It is a pleasant space, but does get down to close to freezing on really cold nights in the winter, as there is no heat to the room. On sunny winter days, though, we leave the door between the sun room and the living room open, and get a lot of heat into the house. We start all of our garden plants on a series of shelves in the south east corner of the room and it works well for that, too.

[Oldcountryboy]

Wisjim, with that amount of overhang do you still get plenty of sunlight in the room during the winter months?

So I guess I need to place a regular shingle roof overhead to avoid overheating.

Thanks for the input, very much appreciated.

[WisJim]

The overhang allows the mid-winter sun to reach the back wall of the sunroom, which is the front wall of the original house. Earlier and later in the winter the sun reaches less and less far back, but it is pretty much in keeping with the amount of sun and heat that we want in the room. We also have some deciduous trees to the south of the house which adds some shade in the summer.

We decided that for us, overheating in the summer was more of a problem than lack of light in the winter would be, and therefore the roof could be solid. We are glad that we didn't put more glass overhead than the 2 skylights.

The pictures were all taken on May 4th of this year, about 5pm.

[Oldcountryboy]

Thanks for the pictures wisjim and thanks everyone for your input. Now I just got to do some remodeling of my house. Where I want my sunroom located is on the back of our masterbedroom. So what I'm gonna do is relocate our masterbedroom to where the dinning room is now, and the dinning room where the masterbedroom is. This way when you walk into the front door on the north side of the house you will cross the living room and walk straight south into the dinning room and then the straight south into the sunroom. If I build it right I would be able to open the windows in the sun room and be able to have a breeze going all the way through the dinning room and into the living room and out the north living room windows during the summer. Should help keep the house a little cooler in the spring and early summer. Shouldn't have to turn on the A/C so early.