There’s no doubt that a sunroom is one of the smartest investments you can make when looking to expand your home’s footprint. It strikes the perfect balance as a permanent addition without the high costs associated with a full building extension. Most sunrooms can be built directly onto an existing deck or patio, offering significant cost savings for homeowners. This approach also helps you visualize the potential size of your sunroom. Best of all, an all-season sunroom creates a versatile space usable year-round, giving you a front-row seat to the beauty of a Calgary winter.
Why Choose An All-Season Sunroom
The most effective way to winter-proof your sunroom for Calgary’s harsh winters is to opt for an all-season model from the start. Unlike a three-season sunroom, an all-season sunroom offers two key advantages.
The first is that there is often an intentional gap built in between the outer and inner walls of the all-season sunroom. This means that it can be built with insulation, and this extra layer will help retain any internal heat that you generate in your sunroom, as well as keep it cooler in summer months.
Secondly, an all-season sunroom can potentially be connected to your home’s existing HVAC system. You’ll need to find a separate contractor who will help to talk you through the various heating options, but you’ll find that your heating costs may decrease in winter as you spend more time in your sunroom than in the rest of your home, as it’s considerably cheaper to heat one room than a whole house.
How To Winter Proof Your Sunroom
Whether you’re looking for additional ways to help protect your all-season sunroom against the winter weather, or looking at how to make your three-season sunroom more efficient, you can easily undertake some of these upgrades to winter proof your sunroom for a Calgary winter:
- Weather strip the windows – the easiest sunroom winter proofing step to take is to install weather strips around the outside of each of your windows. This will stop snow, ice and the infamous Calgary wind from getting in and causing internal damage to the window frame. These simple bits of insulation are made from a variety of materials, but for the longest lasting protection, find ones that are made from synthetic materials like vinyl or rubber. While they should last for multiple seasons, you should keep them clean and check them for damage in the fall so you can make replacements before the really cold weather sets in.
- Keep the gutters clear – another easy winter proofing step for your sunroom is to keep the gutters clear. This means getting out in the fall before the first snowfall and getting all the leaves and debris out, and then scooping out the ice chunks after each snowmelt. If this sounds like a lot of extra work (and it is!), then you need to think about installing gutter guards before the snow starts to fly. These come in two varieties; the guards that sit inside your gutters that allow water through while blocking off debris, or the slats that sit over the top of your gutter to provide a barrier against leaves and twigs. Both are effective ways of making sure you don’t have to be out on the stepladder while it’s freezing outside.
- Stay on top of snow removal – finally, while your sunroom roof will be strong enough to hold up under even the heaviest Calgary snowfall, it’s a good idea to clear off the worst of each snowstorm to prevent snow and ice from melting and slipping under the shingles into the beams of your sunroom. In most cases, you’ll find a long-handled snow broom to be enough to get the worst of it off, and you can always use gravity to help you out by pulling the snow and ice from the lower section of your roof which will help the higher level stuff collapse down. Optional gable (slanted) roofs can be installed when building your sunroom, which means much of the snow will fall off on its own.
Sunroom Services for Your Winter Sunroom
For long-term winter-proofing, consult your local sunroom experts at Desert Sun Patios about these solutions:
- Wall insulation – if you’ve chosen to build a sunroom, you’ve given yourself the perfect way to winter proof your new space with inner wall insulation. An all-season sunroom usually has two layers of wall, one internal and one external, and you can hire insulation professionals to come and fill the gap between these two walls with soft fill. This will trap heat trying to leave during the winter months, helping to keep your sunroom warmer without costing a fortune in energy bills.
- Glazed windows – another way that heat escapes your sunroom is through the windows. Just like with the walls, you can add extra insulation with extra layers, and simply upgrading your windows from double glazing (two layers of glass) to triple glazing (adding a third layer of glass) will make a marked difference on your sunroom’s ability to retain heat even through the coldest months.
- Adding heat – finally, adding a heat source to your sunroom is the easiest way of keeping your new space warm throughout the winter months. However, if you didn’t make a plan for this as you were designing the sunroom, it can be a little tricky going back to connect your space to your existing heating system in the rest of your home. Fortunately, you can add something smaller and independent of a larger heating system like an electric space heater or a small pellet stove (though you’ll still need to work out how to vent this). No matter how you’re planning on adding heat to your sunroom, it’s worth getting your local sunroom experts involved to give you advice as to how to help use your sunroom all winter long.
