The sunroom is a perfect place to relax and soak up the sun’s warmth without ever leaving your home. But while a sunroom may be the perfect temperature during the spring and fall, it can become excessively hot during the summer.
In some areas of the country such as the Pacific, Southwest, or South Atlantic, the hot summer sun may make a sunroom more of a sauna than a place to relax. Keeping your sunroom cool during hot summer months can be difficult, but it is not impossible. There are several easy additions that you can make to your sunroom that will greatly reduce the temperature of the room.
Add Air Flow
A room that receives hours of sunlight needs to have proper ventilation and constant airflow to keep the room from getting too hot. Additional airflow will also reduce the odds of mold and mildew from becoming a problem in your sunroom. The task to keep air moving in your sunroom should have begun when the room was built by adding air vents or an exhaust fan to the ceiling.
The vents will allow naturally rising hot air to escape through the ceiling while an exhaust fan will work to pull the hot air upward and out of the room. Both are essential for removing hot air so that it does not become trapped along with the ceiling of the sunroom. In addition to ceiling ventilation, you can add airflow with small fans placed in the corners of the sunroom that will force hot air upward while forcing constant airflow.
Install Blinds or Curtains
You have a sunroom so that sunlight can stream through and fill the room with bright warm sunlight. But too much sunlight means excess heat. To combat this you can limit the amount of sunlight that can come through the windows by installing blinds or curtains. Blinds can be partially or fully pulled during the afternoon when the sun’s rays are at their peak. Curtains that are installed around windows can be used in the same way to reduce heat due to excess sunlight.
Tint the Windows
Tinted windows can make a huge difference with the amount of heat that permeates your sunroom windows. You may think that window tinting will block too much sun, but that is not the case. In fact, window tinting will block much more heat than sunlight.
Install a Ductless Mini-Split
If the temperature of your sunroom is not coming down with the small changes listed above you can add cool air to the room by having a ductless mini-split unit installed. These types of units do not require changes to your original HVAC ductwork but will require a professional to install.
A ductless mini-split system consists of an outdoor condenser and an indoor fan unit. The indoor unit mounts to the wall and is connected to the condenser through a conduit. Because the compressor is outside of the home, the unit is noiseless but extremely efficient in providing quite a bit of cool air to a room. A ductless mini-split is a more permanent cooling system but it is a great addition to your home’s value.
Add a Window Air Conditioner
Much the same as a ductless mini-split will add cool air to your sunroom, a window air unit will provide a stream of cold air to counteract the heat from the sun. While a window unit may provide immediate cool air, it is not as energy efficient as a ductless mini-split. It is also noisier and may not fit correctly into your windows depending upon their size.
You can keep your sunroom at a comfortable temperature by reducing the amount of heat that the sunlight brings in or by cooling the room through added units and increased airflow. A combination of these two methods will yield the best results, not to mention increase your home’s value with livable square footage and higher energy efficiency. Use several of the above recommendations and your sunroom will be the perfect area to relax during even the sunniest of summer days.
Thanks to homelight.com for consulting.
