Sunroom design in Riverside, CA - a room planned around how you'll use it

Most people who call us have a patio or deck they'd like to close in, or they want a room off the back of the house, and they haven't decided yet whether it's a bright spot for plants or a room they'll sit in through August. The price moves with the size of the room, whether it needs a new foundation, whether it's heated and cooled, and the roof and glass you choose. The schedule mostly turns on how quickly those choices get settled and on the permit review, and the written estimate I send after my visit puts your own room in figures.

I start by sketching the room with you, and we work through the roof early, glass for daylight or solid for shade and comfort, because that choice shapes most of what comes after it. Next we decide how closed in the room should be, a screen room, a three season room or a four season room you heat and cool, since that tells us whether insulated glass, insulated walls and a heating and cooling plan belong in the drawings from the start, when they go in far easier than they do later. Then I look at what the room will sit on and plan how water gets turned away where it meets your floor and your house wall, because those are the parts nobody sees once it's done and the parts I check twice. The finished sketch becomes the plan set for the permit when the job needs one.

Design is the first step of a build, so most of what we draw goes on to become one of our sunroom additions or a closed-in patio or deck. If you'd like frames you wipe down instead of repaint, we also plan vinyl sunrooms, and the design work runs the same right up to picking the frame.

In Riverside, the city's Building & Safety office processes building permit applications, and its permit counter staff can tell you which forms your scope of work calls for, so that's where the answer for a city address comes from. When your job needs a permit, we find out which office covers your address, prepare and file the paperwork and meet the inspector on site, and I'll tell you what we know and what's still up to the city or county. For addresses the county covers, its residential plan guideline asks for soils reports, structural calculations and energy calculations as they apply, which is why we work those out alongside the design instead of after it. If the room will be heated, state energy guidance counts heating a space that wasn't heated or cooled as an addition when it adds both heated floor area and building volume, so a four season room gets planned as an addition and its energy numbers belong in the plans.

We're based in Riverside and work in many of the cities around it in Riverside County and San Bernardino County, so ask us if you don't see yours listed. The calls look much the same on jobs in Moreno Valley and Corona, mostly single-story houses with a concrete patio out back in full afternoon sun, so the roof and shade questions come up first there too.