Need a little extra space? Need a little more light? How about a sunlit room you’ll enjoy year-round, backed by the biggest company in the business and a fellow who’s been putting them up for nearly 30 years.

Chris Smalley got his start in home improvement in a darker end of the sector. Around 1982, looking to go into business for himself, he became a chimney sweep. Smalley planned to expand on this business eventually installing wood stoves—but got sidetracked. “I saw an ad for a passive solar salesperson,” he says. “I thought I … was already in the house for wood and thought (solar) might be a good fit. It turned out it was—what was called at the time Four Seasons Greenhouses.”

These green houses were eligible for State and Federal solar tax credits in the early 1980s, he says, adding “there was a special program for passive solar systems, that would include Four Seasons Greenhouses. The other thing that was big was hot water panels on the roof.” Homeowners were putting the green houses on their homes as much for the solar heat and tax credits as for the extra space they provided, according to Smalley.

“I got so busy with the sunrooms. (They) basically took all of my time and I went strictly into selling Four Seasons sunrooms—back then it was green houses,” he says.

Smalley eventually bought the dealership. Three months later the company converted to a franchise operation and to remain in business he had to buy the franchise. When the storefront he was renting was to be torn down to make way for office space he bought his present location in Beacon. He bought his second Four Seasons’ franchise in 1991, in an existing location on the edge of Kingston. Later relocating this showroom to 255 Broadway in Port Ewen, Smalley would make it his main outlet.

Somewhere in the ‘90s, Four Seasons dropped Greenhouse from its name, and operated as just Four Seasons before later adding “Sunrooms” to better reflect how most of the structures are used today. Of course, the company still installs greenhouses.

A Wide Variety to Meet Your Needs
“They’ve gone through a lot of changes,” says Smalley. “Back in the ‘80s there was basically only one system with an aluminum frame and curved or straight eves. Now there are about 14 systems, Georgian and Victorian conservatories in aluminum, vinyl or wood interiors. There’s post and beam, cathedral, straight eaves, curved. Primarily we’re in the aluminum or wood-framed room business, with an aluminum finish outside and baked on enamel.”

How they’re designed and the type of glass that will be used depends on what they’ll be used for, particularly if your sunroom is going to be a greenhouse. “Depending on what you want to grow dictates which type of glass we use,” says Smalley. “Tomatoes and vegetables like squash, they need direct sunlight. Your vertical walls would be double-clear glass. They need more ultraviolet light.”

Most of Hudson Valley Sunroom’s projects use Four Season Sunrooms’ Conservaglass Plus. “It’s a double-glazed insulated unit that basically addresses the four concerns of having a glass room,” says Smalley. “It doubles the insulation value to R4, controlling over-heating in summer months. It reduces (ultraviolet light) transmission down to seven percent where as double-clear would be 58 percent, and for cleaning, it has a bonded coating on the outside that is activated by (ultraviolet light) and breaks down organic matter—everything from dust to bird poop and other organic debris to wash off in the rain.”

He says this is the sort of glass you want if you’re planning to grow flowers, and it offers the same sort of protection folks used to achieve by white washing their green house glass or installing ugly netting for shade.

The smallest Four Seasons sunroom is typically three by eight feet and about 7.5 to 8 feet tall, bumping out a wall for a little more square footage. These don’t generally have doors of their own, he says. It’s the sort of addition that adds a nice feature to the home without breaking the bank. “We had somebody who wanted to be laying in bed at night and looking at the stars,” says Smalley. This sort of bump-out was the solution.

“The majority tend to be 10 feet by 16 feet. We do some much larger. There are numerous sizes you can choose from, almost countless combinations plus custom work. If you’re going with a lean-to style model, 120 feet long wouldn’t be a problem,” he says, explaining deep is from the outer wall to the house.

And some are much larger. A Victorian Conservatory being constructed in Hyde Park will be 23 feet deep. Smalley recently submitted a proposal for another that would be 29 feet deep, over 30 feet across and around 12 feet high at the peak.

“If somebody wants to enclose a pool, the room that gets designed might be bigger than their house, you’ve got to have a walking area and a sitting area,” he says. For an endless pool Hudson Valley Sunrooms will enclose, Smalley said he was meeting with an architect to design a room that extended 21 feet from the house and was 30 feet across.

Smalley says the vast majority of sunrooms are retrofit onto existing homes, though some architects and homeowners do build them into the plans for new homes. These are usually on the shorter side, from five to 10 feet out from more conventional construction.

“They’re basically to complement a view off a dining room or kitchen area,” says Smalley, adding many go up on insulated decks—sometimes 11 feet off the ground, as at his parents’ house for a sunroom he built in 1983 before buying the company. “We’ve also done these where you open up a basement and flood it with light,” he says.

A Lifetime Warranty
“Four Seasons Sunrooms is franchised in all 50 states and 30 countries,” says Smalley, adding the sunrooms have to meet the building codes in each. “That includes Alaska, Maine and Wisconsin … meeting snow load requirements. Florida doesn’t have snow codes but it does have wind codes. We have to meet the same standards as houses.”

The glass has a limited lifetime warranty, and Smalley has more than one story about it’s durability. “It’s all fully tempered safety glass. A man can walk on it. You can lean a ladder on it. I’ve never had a ball or icicle break a panel,” he says.

Then there are the tests of man (or woman).

“One of my customers came to me at our booth at the Dutchess County Fair and told me his daughter got impatient with him waiting to put an air conditioner in her bedroom window,” says Smalley. “She got it onto the sill and it went right through, bounced off the roof of the sunroom and bounced on to the deck.” No damage.

Where Can I See One?
Smalley has installed Four Seasons Sunrooms on so many houses and businesses across the region that it’s likely you’ve been in one—even if you didn’t know it at the time. Years ago he finished a job at Benedictine Hospital in Kingston, though he says unless you worked there or were arriving on the helicopter pad you didn’t see it. More recently Hudson Valley Sunrooms installed a sunroom on an outpatient area. “You see it from Mary’s Avenue,” says Smalley.

The company has also installed sunrooms for universities and other institutions, including Mount Saint Mary’s College and the Saint Cabrini Home, and restaurants, including Saugerties’ Cafe Tamayo, and the Plum Bush Inn and the Pig Hill Inn—both in Cold Spring. Both of these installations needed to meet the requirements of the Historical Register and gain approval before construction.

The company has even added this touch of glass to fast food outlets, including several area McDonald’s and Burger King restaurants.

And early in his sunroom career he worked on the two walled sunroom on the base lodge at Hunter Mountain, wrapping around part of the bar.

Many installations are on private homes, often not visible from the road; not so of the sunroom added by Hudson Valley Sunrooms to the Poughkeepsie Galleria enclosing Marshalls. “Those are out front,” he says, offering it as another example many folks will have seen.

Custom Designs
“This is not a car, where you get an engine and four wheels. We order what is needed to complete the project. That could be two walls, three, four or only skylights.

“The curved rooms at Hunter Mountain and a lot of restaurants, a lot of people associate us with the curved bronze room,” says Smalley. “Back in the ‘80s there were a lot of those built and we built a lot of them. We still build them. We have a sample in our showroom, but there’s a Victorian-style conservatory on the front of the showroom with five walls and five roof lines to the peak—cathedral rooms.” Hudson Valley Sunrooms also offers straight roof, curved and cathedral-style rooms.

Smalley says the most popular designs include sliding windows, that help regulate the temperature inside, with 50 percent screen coverage.

The main factory is in Holbrook, Long Island, where Smalley periodically heads for additional training and dealer information. This was the case recently when Four Seasons Sunrooms added new business lines including replacement windows, pergolas and patio furniture and covers.

The company already installs sky lights, like a custom 36-foot long ridge sky light in Woodstock that forms a cross as it meets a second roof line. More stock skylights tend to be in the shapes of pyramids and domes, along the lines of what you may have seen on shopping centers. “I don’t shy away from anything, as long as I can meet the codes,” says Smalley. “There’s nothing we can’t do.”

Smalley operates throughout the greater Catskill Region and beyond. The company has also done work for the State, in Albany and Troy.

Keepin’ It Local
While the company recently completed an 11-foot by 15-foot hot tub enclosure in Saugerties within about four weeks of contract with the customer, that’s a rather short timetable. “The town passed the permit through quickly,” says Smalley. “Brad Hoffstatter, a contractor I work with in Saugerties put the foundation in quickly … and it was done. In Fleischmans I use Ward Finch. I try to work with people in the area. They … already have a relationship with the building departments, relationships with excavators and local electricians. It makes the jobs go easier and homeowners feel better knowing that they’re having somebody who’s a neighbor doing the work.”

Often it’s the approval process and site preparations that take longer the the Hudson Valley Sunrooms’ part of new installation, according to Smalley. But the majority of rooms can be delivered in as little as three to five weeks. Similarly, delivery schedules can accommodate homeowner wishes—if someone’s headed out on vacation, for instance and wants to delay construction.

Rooms to Fit Your Budget
The majority of sunrooms installed by Hudson Valley Sunrooms come in around $18,000 to $40,000. “At this time passive solar, where we’re heating air as in sunrooms, is not currently subsidized by the government as in the early ‘80s, says Smalley. “The interest now is in photovoltaic panels….”

Over the past 18 months, with the banks “taking it on the chin,” as Smalley puts it, he’s had the unfortunate experience of encountering potential customers whose banks won’t lend them the money for a sunroom, or won’t lend at a desirable interest rate. In one case, the owner of an $800,000 house wanted to add a $45,000 sunroom. The bank basically said we don’t think that’s a good idea,” says Smalley. For those customers, Four Seasons has introduced a program requiring no payments for the first 12 months.

“Four Seasons is the largest manufacturer in the country,” says Smalley. “Back in the 1980s all the competition was trying to go along with the all-glass room to take advantage of the passive solar tax credits being offered at the time. When the tax credits went away, so did the companies.”

He says presently a handful of companies offer glass-enclosed rooms with insulated roofs—and Four Seasons has two designs that meet that description as well, but there aren’t too many companies offering all glass rooms.

Hudson Valley Sunrooms employs a full and part-time sales person, and two installation crews year-round. On big jobs, Smalley says the crews are sometimes combined to speed the work along.

For More Information…
For more information visit www.hvsk.fourseasonssunrooms.com where you can create and print a custom personalized brochure, or call 845 339 1787.