Solarium installation in Rossmoor CA - a glass room that stays comfortable

A solarium is a fully enclosed room that's heated and cooled and has all-weather windows, while a three-season room is generally not heated or cooled and has uninsulated windows or screens. When a solarium opens to the rest of your house, the industry's sunroom specification treats it as living space conditioned like any other room. The choice comes down to whether you want a room you heat and cool or a simpler space with screens, and I'll ask how you plan to use it before recommending either.

Building a sunroom in Orange County usually costs about $120 to $170 per square foot, and that's the going rate for sunrooms broadly, not our price. Where your solarium falls in that range turns on the size and choices I mentioned earlier, and your free estimate lays them out line by line.

High-performance glass usually works best, because one solarium maker notes that a room with this much glass can lose or gain too much heat otherwise. That maker points to insulated, tinted or low-e glass, which carries a thin coating that slows heat through the pane, so it's worth asking which of these a quote includes. In California, state efficiency standards for windows and doors depend on the climate zone a house sits in, so the glass a Rossmoor solarium needs can depend on that zone, and we confirm it for your address when we plan the glass.

A contractor licensed by the Contractors State License Board has to do the work when it needs a building permit or comes to $1,000 or more in labor and materials. When a job takes more than two kinds of work on a building, the board's guidance lets a licensed general building contractor run the whole project, and otherwise specialty work needs a specialty license or a specialty contractor. Ask whoever bids your room which license they hold and check it with the board.

Check with OC Development Services before anything is built, because Orange County issues building permits in its unincorporated areas, typically for new buildings and additions, and its list names bedrooms and patios but doesn't mention solariums. We check which office covers your address, and when the work needs a permit, we take care of the application and meet the inspector.

Plan highly insulated windows and insulation in the walls, floor and roof from the start, because those are what make a sunroom more energy efficient. They're much easier to add while the room is being built, and adding them later can often cost more, so I settle them in the first plan instead of leaving them for later.