If you do not know the temperatures in your area, you should wait to install flooring until you do know, then make the appropriate flooring choices for that specification so you get a suitable product that will last in its enviroment and maintain its warrenty. If it can be controlled (temp as well as humidity), then almost anything you like can be installed, but if it can not, you are limited to your flooring choices. If there is no heat in that area, then it needs to be considered an external or cold area, and while it may retain some heat from the house and solar heat from the windows, temp may still drastically fluctuate from season to season and from day to night even in the cold months. This causes expansion and contraction from thermal variaion, and while normal to some degree, haviong it happen every night/day cycle can have adverse effects on your average residential interior flooring products. Flooring on average does not take well to that fluctuation. Resililient flooring especially, like sheet vinyl and luxury vinyl planks and tiles that require controlled climates. If you do not mind the loss of a warrentee and do not mind periodically replacing your flooring as needed should the fluctuations cause a failure, then by all means, install anything you like in there, but as professionals, it is our job to notify you of the risks involved. Just because something worked when installed improperly or in an improper area does not mean it will work every time or work for you. Any deviation from the isntallation recommendations and standards can cause a failure. Standards and recommendations exist to prevent those failures and are time and industry proven methods that work everytime. Installation and area prerequisites and standards handed down by manufacturers are there for a reason. To give you a beautiful floor that will last. As flooring professionals, it is our job to assist you with your specification and installation needs and that should be done to the letter of the standards. Should you decide to deviate from those standards, then you have made an educated decission, albiet a risky one.

You have very few choices. No type of vinyl will work...no vinyl plank, vinyl, Luxury vinyl, etc etc etc. No laminate, no wood. Possibly a floating vinyl fiber floor with a large expansion gap could work but will not be manufacturer approved. Carpet or Porcelain ceramic tile will work and can be warranted. That is really about it. This is why most have carpet. Sorry. Other posters may disagree somewhat, but you can take this info as fact. We sell it all and have seen it all. We had 5000 sq ft of vinyl plank blow up 6 weeks ago because it was laid without proper heating source installed yet, than it got warm and it lifted 3 inches off the floor in spots. Tore it all out. Good Luck.

We used to have a storm door that the screen always stayed in, but the plexiglass (or whatever it was -it wasnt heavy glass) was in a frame that we would mount on the door in winter and take off during the summer. It was easy to put on the door and had little hardware that turned to go over the frame and hold it. I am unaware of any ready made product on the market like that for porches, but I think it would be reasonably easy to make.

Thanks for the eze breeze tip, scrappy. I did some searching and they look like a promising option! Some people complained that the windows had no R value and thus didn't work great for keeping plants through the winter. (All we would do would be herbs, I think.) But it sounds like you and your company were able to stay very comfortable, regardless of the windows' lack of insulation. With the space heater, how long into the winter can you use the room? We've only lived here for a few months, littlebug and lavender_lass, so we're still figuring out traffic patterns. Right now this side door is our main avenue to the car / outside, but that might change to our back door once we redo our kitchen and mudroom. (Thanks again, lavender_lass, for your advice over on the kitchen forums!) I'd want to keep a pathway on this new porch, either way, so the most you could probably do would be a couple chairs OR a sofa and a table for herbs. There's not a ton of space, and I agree that that might mean it's not worth glassing in. I'm still stumped, I guess. Maybe the best option would be to frame the openings, staple on some cheap screens, and add a Habitat Restore screen door -- then we can see how we like it as a screened porch. But we could also frame the windows with the idea that we might add single-pane windows in the future. That way the conversion wouldn't create too much extra work. klem1, I appreciate your suggestions on how to make the glassing in work. I hadn't really thought about shades but you're right -- they could allay a lot of my worries about the summer heat.