Sunrooms: an Alternative to Full Room Additions

If you are seeking to add space to your home, one optionis to hire a contractor to build a roomaddition that adds a bump-out or extension to the main footprint of the house. But it is also an option that can quickly alarm budget-conscious homeowners when the bids from general contractors come in. It is not at all uncommon for a custom-built addition to cost in excess of $100,000, and it is nearly impossible to get any custom addition of this type done for less than $50,000.

These prices quickly cause many people to look for alternatives to custom room additions. One very popular alternative is a sunrooma space that bridges indoor and outdoor spaces with a comfortable supplemental living area. Fact that a sunroom usually costs about half of a traditional stick-built addition makes this a very attractive option for many people.

To the novice, the various terms used for add-on living space can be confusing:

Stick-built addition: Stick-built is the short-hand term for any kind of structure that is built from scratch. In this case, we are referring to house additions, room additions, and other bump-outs that are constructed from wood, concrete, glass, house sheathing, shinglesnearly every component that is usedwhen building a home. These additions may have full basements beneath them in regions where that is the norm. A true room addition must have full electrical service and must also have HVAC service. This type of room addition adds to the official square footage of the house. According tothe International Energy Conservation Code (IECC), any conditioned living space cannot have more than 40 percent of the wall space given over to glass windows.

Sunrooms: The term sunroom is usually defined as a recreational space bridging indoor and outdoor living areas, usually with a considerable amount of wall space dedicated to glassoften as much as 80 percent. Building codes generally do not require a sunroom to have electricity or central heating/cooling service, although this is not a hard-and-fast rule: many sunrooms now have electrical services, and they may have supplemental heating and cooling.Sunrooms oftenare built on floating concrete slabs with shallow perimeter foundations, somewhat like those used for a garage; full basements beneath sunrooms are rare.

Within the sunroom category, though there are two subcategories. Sunrooms can be custom-built by a local general contractor who will design and build the sunroom to your specifications. Such sunrooms have traditional stud-and-truss framing and shingle roofs, but the walls are predominantly glass, formed by patiodoors or full-length windows. More commonly, though, today's sunrooms are constructed from prefabricated kits that come with framework pieces of steel, aluminum or fiberglass, along with the glass panels for the walls.Pre-fab sunroom additions are assembled in puzzle-like fashion, usually by qualified technicians. The fact that these are "kits" does not mean that assembly is an easy DIY project, although many homeowners have successfully assembled them. A pre-fab sunroom is designed and fabricated off-site, then is shipped in pieces to your home packed in flat cartons. Assembly can be done by a homeowner, or more often by a contractor affiliated with the kit manufacturer.

Costs for sunrooms vary enormously. Arecent surveyshowed that the average cost of a sunroom was $15,104, nationally, but that costs in excess of $75,000 are also possible for a large sunroom square feet) when a new slab-on-grade foundation was required.

Here are some typical costs for a 15 x 15-ft. sunroom kit:

Since sunroom builders in recent years have been stepping up their game and rewriting some of the rules, these distinctions between stick-built additions and sunrooms are constantly changing and narrowing.For example, there was a time when most pre-fab sunrooms were not wired for electricity. Now, this is a viable option with most sunroom packages.

In their eagerness to add a sunroom, homeowners often make certain mistaken assumptions about sunrooms. Here are some corrections to common misconceptions:

Some reputable pre-fab sunroom manufacturers include:

A sunroom is a fantastically tempting alternative to a conventional, full-sized addition. On average, these light-bathed spaces are cheaper than stick-built additions, and since fewer sub-contractors are involved, sunrooms go up quickly. Although the spaced added by a sunroom is defined as supplemental spacenot the essential living space offered by room additionfor many homeowners, a sunroom is a perfect choice.

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Sunrooms: an Alternative to Full Room Additions