Solarium installation in La Palma CA - a glass room you can heat, cool and use all year

Most people who call us have a patio, a deck or an old sunroom they hardly use, and they want a room they can sit in any day of the year. If you're starting from a slab out back, the job works a lot like a patio-to-sunroom conversion. The price moves mostly with the size of the room, whether it needs a new foundation, and the glass, insulation and heating and cooling you choose. The schedule mostly turns on the city's plan review and inspection days, and we handle both for you. When I come out, I look at what the room will tie into and write up the room type, the options and the price for your job, so you have your own figure instead of a guess.

I start by measuring and looking hard at what the room will sit on, because a room is only as good as its base. A solarium is a fully closed glass room you heat and cool, so we settle the heating and cooling and the height of the base before the frame goes up. One sunroom maker's installation guide says the foundation has to sit higher than the ground around it, because standing water can get into the room's tracks and then into the room. We also pick the glass and insulation with you up front. Highly insulated windows and insulation in the walls, floor and roof are much easier to put in while the room is being built, and adding them later often costs more. Once those choices are made, our crew preps the base, puts up the frame, sets the glass and roof, and cleans up when we're done.

Some homeowners find out on the first visit that they don't need a closed room at all, and patio cover installation gives them shade over the slab without walls. If you know you want a solarium but haven't pinned down the size, roof or glass, our sunroom design work is where we sort that out before anything is ordered.

In La Palma, almost every set of improvement plans goes through plan check before the city's Building and Safety office issues a permit. Plan check is the city's review of the drawings, so we build that step into the schedule for a solarium. If your job needs a permit, we prepare the plans, file them with the city, book the inspections and tell you ahead of any visit where you need to be home. The city's planning staff also handle residential remodel and design review applications, and if your room needs that review, we sort it out with the city before we build.

On jobs here and in Cypress and Buena Park, we often find a concrete patio or an older patio cover out back. Before we talk about glass, I check whether that slab can carry a closed room and whether it sits high enough above the yard.