Three season sunrooms in Riverside CA - a room built for how you'll use it later

Most people who call us already have a slab, a deck or a covered patio off the back of the house and want to use it more. The price moves mostly with the size of the room, what it sits on and whether that base needs work first, the wall and roof choices you make, and whether you want it ready for heat later on. The schedule turns mostly on that base and on the city's permit review when the job needs one. I look at all of it on site and put it in a written estimate, and if you already know you want heating and cooling, a four season sunroom is the better fit.

Before I measure anything, I ask how you might use the room a few years from now, not just this year, because a room built to stay unheated may not be ready to become a family room later. A three season room on a deck can be sound as an unheated space and still turn out undersized, under-insulated and short on support once someone adds a heater, flooring and furniture, so if that's a possibility we plan for it now. Next we look at what the room will sit on and how your yard is shaped. One sunroom maker's guide calls a wood deck base the more adaptable and possibly cheaper choice, concrete the strongest and most permanent, and pier and beam a good fit for slopes and existing surfaces, so the shape of your yard does a lot of the deciding. Then we frame the walls and roof, set the screens or windows, and take our time where the room meets the floor and the house, because that's where water gets in if it's going to.

Some homeowners only need part of this. If you have a covered patio and want it closed in, patio enclosures may be the simpler job, and if your house has an odd footprint or roofline, we draw custom sunrooms to fit it.

In Riverside, the city's Building & Safety office processes building permit applications, and the counter staff there can tell you which forms a given scope of work needs, from authorized agent forms for owners and contractors to a property owner's package. Whether your room needs a permit is something we confirm for your address rather than guess at. When it does, we find out which office covers your address, prepare and file the paperwork, and meet the inspector on site. I'll tell you what we've confirmed and what's still up to the city or county.

Most of our calls here are to close in a patio or deck that's already there, and those bases vary a lot in age and shape from one house to the next, so I look at yours before I suggest anything. We see the same mix on jobs in Moreno Valley and Corona, and we work in many of the cities around Riverside in Riverside County and San Bernardino County, so ask if yours isn't listed.