Sunrooms or Arizona Rooms

We are getting ready to close in our porch and I thought this would be a new great topic to add. Wasn't sure where to put it, but greenhouses seemed the best. Since it would be housing some of my plants. Any pictures welcome.

Oh, my - I have a Florida room - a screened in patio, covered in clear plastic, where I put the greenhouse overflow each fall - it is great. I have it half filled with plants and spend lots of time there - it's another room that makes my life beautiful! When it gets down in the low 30's, I have a heater I turn on - a wonderful way to extend your greenhouse!

I am contemplating building a sun room on the lower level to use as a greenhouse. The room would be 7' X 14' and would face almost due south. It would only need glass on two sides. I would have to pour some addtional concrete for the floor.

Any suggestions on details and features are greatly appreciated. Does anyone know of a company that can fabricate the glass panels as a kit?

Sonny

Sonny, you might consider plexiglas instead of regular glass OR a screened porch and use heavy 6 mil. plastic to cover it in the winter.

We have designed a plan and will be putting windows that match our home and two sliding french doors for ventilation. All windows will have screens and we only have two walls to do. We are leaving the floor which is stamped concrete and putting beadboard below the windows, but leaving all stucco that is there. The easiest an simple way. I want to put in a pet door for my cats to be out there and hopefully my dog too and a keyed collar for him to get outside to go potty. I will keep the plants to minimum, hanging and a iron plant shelf as the room will be small compared to some I have seen. We have one nice pull down shade from Home Depot for evening sun and will probably get another for that side. The other side is fine and when the wisteria grows in we have lots of shade at certain times of the day. Here is the patio we are closing in. This will help the wind we have here too.

Kay,

This will not be an area were people hang out except to work on early season plant starts.

Thanks for the suggestion on plexiglass, but having worked in a polycarbonate research project years ago I feel that double pane glass would be best for this particular application in my climate. This solarium will only have two glass walls as the second story bump out of the house will be the top and the stucco walls will be two sides. I figure this will also help me bring more heat into the lower level which can then rise through the house.

Controling the temperature during the summer would be my chief concern.

Sonny

when I lived in Phoenix I had a huge back porch like curvesarein.. a friend came over and built a series of roman shadesout of pullies, pipe and shade cloth to help keep the heat of the afternoon down.. it worked great.. much cheaper than buying them ready made and easy to do to

Well we ordered the windows and are mapping out the walls today. It will have 2 six foot sliders and 3 five foot by 3 foot windows put together for 9 feet and one slder will go on side with a 2 foot by five foot single hung window. Similar to this look.

This message was edited Apr 3, 2010 11:53 AM

Isn't this a nice look too?

This message was edited Apr 3, 2010 11:52 AM

I absolutely love this room.

beautiful!

Here is our project so far. Many weekends of hard work put in and more to go.

http://picasaweb.google.com/curvesarein/AZRoom#

Solariums are great... ours warms the house nicely in the winter... but adds so much heat in the summer. Still its my favorite room.

I have updated pics in my picasa link above. Decorating now.