Building a Sun Room Patio Enclosure

Building a sun room patio enclosure makes the open space in your patio much more liveable. Just a layer of screen material between the patio and the outside world suddenly makes your patio feel more like a room than an open space. Nowadays we have more options for materials in building patio enclosures. Aluminum screen rails can be used instead of bulky wooden framing. Aluminum rails are also maintenance free so theres no regular painting and replacement of rotted wood.

Outdoor Screen Enclosure in an existing porch

The sun room patio enclosure in the pictures was built with aluminum screen rail. The rails used are exactly the same as those used in heavy duty sliding screen doors. Their extruded aluminum construction makes them plenty strong enough to support huge screen openings. In this patio there was a good solid concrete floor to begin with which the panels could be attached to with concrete fasteners. The roof of the patio can be existing wood construction or aluminum soffit. The top of the panels can be screwed through the soffit directly into the wood.

The porch also has a sliding screen door built into one side. Because the screen door is made from the same materials as the screen porch, it fits in easily with the rest of the porch. The screen rails dont stand out as much as traditional 4"x4" wooden porch construction does. The screen rails also allow very wide openings to be created.

Porch with existing Support Columns

The house shown in the picture has an existing screen porch with brick construction and wooden cladding to conceal the steel support columns. The columns have decorative brick facing on the lower half of the column. Its still possible to fill in the very large openings with extruded screen bar just by making rectangular frames and screwing them directly into the wood cladding of the columns. Smaller rectangualr frames were created that screw into the brick facing with concrete fasteners.