Screen Porch

[webbmeister]

Howdy - a TBN'er visiting a little over here on CBN. We're finally building our house, and we'd like one of the rooms to be a screen porch (screens on front and both sides.) Currently, it is designated a sunroom, but that's not what we're after. We have wrestled with sliding windows, Phantom screens, casement windows, and double-hung windows. The closest we can come to a true plain old screen porch with these is casement windows. Even with these, when opened to their full 90 degree position, it is far more like open windows than a real porch.

My grandfather built a screen porch structure into which he would place wood-framed screen windows in the summer and wood-framed storm windows in the winter. Either the screens or the storms would reside in the basement, depending on the season. This worked great!

I've talked to several window manufacturers and scanned the building magazines for updated and thermally reasonable versions of such a system (we live in the midwest - reasonable thermal behavior matters. A lot.) I haven't turned up a thing.

Does anyone here have any ideas about how to proceed - where to look? Thanks in advance for any clues provided.

Regards,

Jim

[Argee]

Just a thought! Go with vinyl slider windows w/ full screens. Remove the windows in the summer.

[Pat]

Double hungs have full screens. Modern relatively innexpensive dual glazed thermo pane windows in vinyl typically have tilt out/removable window portions. Take windows out in summer and store in basement. In winter install windows and take out screens (better visibility).

Be prepared to replace the screens. Grasshoppers ate big (over 1 inch diameter in some instances) holes in the plastic screens on the windows of the sun porch I did for my moms house. It is 10x33 ft and is nearly all glass on three sides. Double hung vinyl windows.

Patrick