Deck-to-sunroom conversion in Eastvale CA - a room on a deck built to carry it

Most people who call me have a deck that sits empty much of the year, and they want a room out there instead. The price and the schedule turn mostly on two things, how much work the deck needs before it can carry a room and which room you choose. A four-season room is fully enclosed, with heating, cooling and all-weather windows, while a three-season room has no heating or cooling and uses uninsulated windows or screens, and a bigger room with heat and air conditioning sits toward the high end of the cost. Any repair to the deck comes first, so it adds time as well as money. When a job needs a permit, we put the paperwork together, submit it to the city or county office for your address and meet the inspector for the visits. We're based in Eastvale and work in the cities around it in both Riverside and San Bernardino counties, and the estimate at your house is where you get your own number.

I start under the deck, because not every deck was built to carry walls and a roof, so I look over the footings that hold it up in the ground, along with the joists and framing. If yours needs shoring up, you hear that from me before I price the room, so the number you get covers what the job really takes. Next we settle the insulation, because insulated windows and insulation in the walls, floor and roof go in much more easily while the room is being built, and adding them later can often cost more. Then our installers build to the maker's instructions, since parts of the maker's warranty hang on a proper install.

If you already know you want a room you'll use every month of the year, our page on all season rooms goes further into that build. And if the deck turns out to be more trouble than it's worth, enclosed patio rooms built at ground level can be a simpler way to get the same space.

The biggest local question is whether you'll heat or cool the room. Guidance from the California Energy Commission, in an earlier edition of its manual, treats adding a conditioned sunroom, or enclosing and conditioning an existing patio, as an addition, and the commission says several of its standards for walls, roof, floor, windows and doors depend on the climate zone where the house sits. How that applies to your room today is worth confirming with the City of Eastvale at 951.361.0900, and I'd rather settle it before we pick windows than after, since heating or cooling is what brings a room under that guidance.

Most decks we see around here were built for a table, a grill and foot traffic, and plenty have spent years in hard sun, so the deck gets as much of my attention as the room design. We find the same thing on jobs in Jurupa Valley and Norco.