There are numerous benefits provided by a sunroom: creating an extra room for entertaining, adding instant value to your property and giving you and your family more breathing room from each other. One of the less obvious benefits, but one that should still be a significant part of your decision making process when planning out your sunroom, is how a sunroom can help lower your carbon footprint. With the world moving in an environmentally conscious direction, and with Alberta and the new National carbon tax, it’s essential for homeowners to be looking for ways to save energy, as both of these taxes place an additional cost on energy. Many people are looking for ways to reduce their energy usage around their home and luckily, a sunroom provides an opportunity to be both environmentally conscious while reducing your overall carbon footprint.
Save money with the sunroom!
It’s true, a sunroom is a great investment in relaxation and the value of your home. It’s also a great way to save money in the long run, both by itself and in comparison to other home extensions. If nothing else, it provides you with a significant percentage increase in roof real estate to install solar panels on, which will directly contribute to reducing your energy bills. Enjoy a warm, efficient space with the sunroom from Desert Patios! Get a no-nonsense quote.
Natural light creates an energy saving multi-use space
Thanks to the overall amount of sunlight that Calgary receives annually (over 2350 hours per year, one of the highest amounts in Canada!), a sunroom truly becomes a multi-use space to save energy and reduce your carbon footprint. You just have to think creatively about ways to use the copious amounts of natural sunlight to offset some of the high energy activities that get overused around your home. Here are just three examples of energy saving uses for your efficient sunroom:
Dry your clothes in your sunroom
As convenient as driers are, they’re also big energy users. Even with a modern, more energy efficient tumble dryer model, it still takes a fair bit of energy to heat and circulate the air used to dry your clothes. In place of a dryer, why not hang your clothes on a drying rack in your sunroom? With ample sunlight, your clothes will dry much faster than you think (the same is true even for overcast days due to the heat-trapping effects of your sunroom). You get all the benefits of air drying your clothes outside without having to worry about bugs, sudden rainstorms or debris getting caught in your clothes. The only thing that you’ll need to invest in is some sort of dehumidifier, as all of the residual water in your clothes will evaporate into your sunroom and has to go somewhere. However, these are a one-time expense and cost considerably less to run than your dryer, in terms of energy and money.
Use your sunroom as an indoor garden
Calgarians are big on their gardens thanks to the short growing season and ample sunlight. What if you could extend your growing season, grow a larger variety of plants and enjoy the benefits that they offer? Well, inside your sunroom, you can! There’s not even a need for heat lamps to help kick start the propagation process as the natural heat preserving qualities of your sunroom will give your new seedlings all the warmth they need to start germinating. Sunburn is always a major concern for growing plants indoors, and this is only exacerbated with sunrooms with the multi-glazed windows amplifying the strength of the sun’s rays. You’ll need to water and rotate your plants regularly, but the time and effort spent will be outweighed by having living plants almost year round in your new sunroom.
Warm up inside your sunroom
Many Calgarians turn on their natural gas fireplace when they’re cold. Hey, we get it, two or three week long cold snaps don’t do it for us either. However, the ambient temperature inside the sunroom can be several degrees warmer than the rest of your home due to the high levels of sunlight and the well-insulated walls and windows that come as an automatic part of any Desert Sun Patio sunroom. Instead of turning on your fireplace, why not spend some time basking in the sun? In addition to helping your warm up you’ll also feel better – the exposure to the sun helps your body create vitamin D, which is essential in your emotional well-being.
These are just three examples of how you can use your sunroof, but there are countless others. After all, it’s your room to enjoy and utilize as you wish!
A sunroom is a versatile, multipurpose space
The beauty of the sunroom is that it can be designed, customized, and built to meet your needs. If you’re seeking a three-season sunroom, we can build one exactly as you intend; if you were seeking a year-round addition to your home we can build your four season sunroom to meet all codes tied to insulation, energies, HVAC, and more.
In other words, when creating the sunroom you’ve been dreaming about we can design it to meet your needs exactly. But so too is the versatility and its use, this is especially true of the four season sunroom.
Our four-season sunrooms are well insulated and prepared for Calgary’s Climate
One of the things we’re very proud of is how efficiently designs and well-built our sunrooms are. You can learn more about how we build our three and four season sunrooms by contacting us or visiting our huge indoor showroom. Here is a brief summary:
Properly insulated
We use solid core foam insulation, one of the most efficient types available to line the walls of our four season sunrooms. Solid core foam insulation provides a double layer of insulatio and energy efficiency for your sunroom: it keeps cold air out, even during the biggest Calgary storms, and retains heat on the inside, whether that comes from your HVAC system or just natural heat from sunlight. This double protection will drastically reduce your sunroom energy bills and may even get you thinking about solid core foam insulation throughout the rest of your home!
Energy efficient windows
We use dual glazed Cardinal 272 Low-E glass that includes a layer of trapped argon gas between panes. It may not sound like much, but this added layer of gas (instead of just regular air) adds significant efficiency to your sunroom.
Energy efficient construction
We ensure the insulate readiness of a sunroom by following a methodical construction that meets all appropriate codes and minimized air-heat loss. This includes all aspects of the sunroom, from the walls to the roof. We can even work with you if you’re looking for a hermetically sealed room to really ramp up your energy efficiency. We always build your sunroom to meet your specific requirements.
If you want to double up on insulation, beef up waterproofing or go to town in other areas, come and talk to one of our sales team. We’ve built hundreds of sunrooms for homeowners all across Calgary, Airdrie, Okotoks, and other surrounding communities and we’re excited to help you start your journey towards a lower carbon footprint with a brand new energy efficient sunroom.
Don’t forget to pay us a visit and check out our huge indoor showroom!
My wife and I have always wanted to add a sunroom to our house, but we haven’t seriously thought about it before. I like that you mention how you can warm up you and your house. This would be a great way to get enough sun intake and cut back on energy bills I bet.