Patio enclosures in Rancho Santa Margarita CA - a patio room you'll actually sit in

Most people who call me have a covered patio they like the idea of and rarely sit on, because the bugs find it at dusk, the wind blows dust and leaves into every corner, or the afternoon sun bakes it. The price mostly depends on the walls you choose and whatever the cover and slab need before walls go on, and the schedule depends on that same prep plus the city's review. We find out what the building office wants before plans go in, and your estimate puts the plan and the price for your patio in writing. If your cover isn't strong enough to become a roof, a new one through our patio cover installation work may be the right first step.

Your existing cover becomes the roof of the new room, so I start overhead, checking how it's tied to the house and whether the posts and beams are sound. Then I look at the slab the walls will sit on, and if either one isn't ready, I tell you what it'll take before you pick your walls, because that cost belongs in the decision. Once the cover and slab are right, our crew frames the openings, sets the screen, glass or solid panels, seals them to the slab and the cover, and cleans up before we leave.

Sometimes an enclosure isn't the right answer. If you want a layout, roofline or amount of glass your current cover can't give you, that's our custom sunrooms work, and if the cover or slab would need so much that you'd really be building new, we handle it as sunroom construction with a roof and floor made for a room from the start.

The city's Building and Safety Division decides whether your enclosure needs a permit, and its permit list names additions and accessory structures but not patio enclosures, so the answer for your patio isn't settled until someone asks. The city asks residents to contact Building and Safety before starting construction, so that's one of the first calls I make, since plans here may also go to Public Works, Planning or the Orange County Fire Authority. Parts of the city fall in Very High, High or Moderate zones on its draft fire hazard maps, and homes in a designated zone face building standards for new construction near wildland, so we check where your house sits before settling the walls and roof. When a permit applies, we prepare the paperwork and pull it as your contractor.

We're based in Rancho Santa Margarita, and most of the patios we see here sit behind tract homes with covers and slabs that have seen a few decades of sun and settling. We find the same thing on jobs in Mission Viejo and Ladera Ranch, which is why every job starts with the cover and slab.