Your sunroom is easily the best place to enjoy fall in Calgary. It gives you the best of the outside world with an up front view of the changing colours and beautiful sunsets while also giving you all the benefits of being inside during fall, including a warm place to snuggle in the evenings and protection from the notorious Alberta hailstorms. As with all your new home improvements, it’s important to perform preventative maintenance for your sunroom to help you stay warm and safe all season long.
The Solarium Difference
For many Calgary homeowners, the words sunroom and solarium are used interchangeably, but for those in the industry, they are two different home extensions. A sunroom is an actual room with solid walls and a solid roof. The main features are big windows and usually a glass door out to your garden. A solarium gives you the same square footage as a sunroom, but typically the walls and ceiling are all glass panels, giving it a greenhouse vibe. It’s clear to see that a solarium is much more at risk from Calgary’s fall weather given the large glass surface area.
Fall-Proofing Your Solarium
Owning a full glass solarium in Calgary can seem like an invitation to broken shards as the weather starts to turn in fall, but your Calgary sunroom contractor will have tips on how to get your room ready for the change in season. Some of these include:
- Clear the gutters – first up, your external gutters can pose a big threat to your solarium as the first frost approaches. You need to make sure that rainwater has the ability to run off the ceiling glass and down the gutters to the ground. Leaves and debris can quickly clog up your gutters, which in turn will freeze and put heavy weights on the outside of your solarium. Keeping your gutters clear of fall debris will be an ongoing project all season long.
- Check the caulking – the edges where the glass meets the frame, and where the frame meets the external wall of your home can shrink as the evenings get darker and colder. You extend the life of your window panes by reapplying caulk before cold air starts to seep into your solarium. Be sure to check either last thing at night or first thing in the morning when the outside temperature is coldest.
- Replace broken weather strips – another way to fall-proof your solarium is to keep an eye on the weather strips around any external doors and windows that can open. These rubber gaskets are susceptible to drying out and becoming brittle, meaning that they lose their effectiveness quickly. The only way to deal with these is to replace them, and fall is the perfect time for this preventative maintenance.
In a similar vein, you can add some soft furnishings to help keep the cold out and the warm in. Thick drapes on your windows and heavy duty plush rugs will not only give you a cozy vibe in your solarium, but will keep the inside naturally warm, reducing the impact on the joints and seals of your solarium.
