All very interestng arguments; however, I am convinced that all the CFC hype is just so much mfr BS just to get new patent royalties and to charge more for equipment. EPA and other gov't agencies don't care a hoot about atmospheric CFC's. My brother lives in a large Virginia city. Their City refuse collection department requires junk refrigerators to be placed by the curb by a specific early morning hour and the disposer must call a number before a specific time to report a refrigerator on the curb for pick up. He told me - and I believe him- that he placed an old refrigerator which was still fully charged with F12 by the curb, called per the City's rules. Soon afterwards, a city vehicle pulled up outside, a man went to the refrigerator for three or four minutes and left. He walked out to see what the man did. He found that the city employee had cut the refrigerant line and dumped all the F12 and had placed a sticker on the refrigerator that read "No Freon". Later that day, a truck arrived, loaded the refrigerator and hauled it away. I have access to a municipal refuse disposal site. County trucks pick up refrigerators from various county public refuse collection sites and haul them to the county refuse disposal site. They are picked up with a machine that regularly damages the refrigerant systems. The refrigerators are off-loaded at the county disposal site by dumping them off the truck. Heavy equipment is used to push the refrigerators - along with the washing machines, driers, bicycles, etc. - into a pile about thirty feet high. Periodically, a large truck comes and hauls all the crushed junk to some recycle center elsewhere. NONE of the refrigerant is evacuated for recyle. I filed a report, nothing ever became of it!! Likewise, junk automobiles go to the junk yards, I don't regularly go to pull my own used auto parts but when I do, I see evidence that no CFC is evacuated for recycle. It is not economically feasible to recycle CFC's; HOWEVER, if CFC spillage were such a problem, there would be better controls. It's all hype to protect new patents and royalties and to justify mfrs' gouging the public for more profit on replacement equipment. If they can make repairing a system expensive enough - like extreme prices to recharge a system - people will buy new equipment; and they do! When our grand leaders in DC start sending inspectors out to find and penalize people who dump CFCs then you guys can continue your argument!! Otherwise, its all irrelevant!!!

Slate and bluestone are both very good choices for colonial houses...as is brick. Vinyl is fine for many things, but do think about how much sunlight and how much temperature change it will have to stand. Slate, when wet, can be very slippery. Brick absorbs a lot of heat energy from sunlight and then radiates it back at night, which is really great in the winter, and might be problematic in hot weather, unless you can shade the room when you need to. Slate and bluestone do as well, but brick does it more. Grass matting looks great on brick, and helps control that heat in summer. A single material gives you a much cleaner and less cluttered look than a mix... unless it's a very big room, I'd think about that before I chose.

I would have the size of the sunroom to relate to rest of your house. You don't want the sunroom to be too large in relation to the overall house. Someone with an eye for design could assist you there. We had our sunroom added on 18 years ago. At the time I researched ways to make it energy-efficient. One recommendation was to have tile floors as the tiles absorb heat during the day and release it at night. There are also other recommendations such as the type of windows (we used Anderson low-e) and the amount of roof overhang. Another factor to consider is the orientation to the pattern of the sunlight during the day. We have a Cape Cod style house with the sunroom going off perpendicular to the house at the rear. We have a great southern exposure and I am able to grow geraniums there all year round. Another area to consider is the backup heating for your sunroom if you live in an area where you would need that. The remainder of our house is oil-heated but we have an electric baseboard heater in our sunroom and it really runs up the electric bill. (We keep the sunroom closed off except when we are using it because of the cat getting into my plants.) There are books out there that would address all these topics. Look at Lowe's or Home Depot.

We live in a 1920s house and we have two. One is upstairs, connected to the master and only has two walls of windows and we were told was a "sleeping porch" originally. Eight years ago we added a room onto the back of the house, a room with sliding doors instead of windows on three of the walls. It looks like a porch that has been enclosed, but it is all new build. The room upstairs is our extra TV room -- two comfortable leather chairs and a TV and the wall that isn't windows is a wall of books. The downstairs room we use for a breakfast room (we have no eat in kitchen). It has one brick wall (the outside of the house) and a brick floor. It's where the big plants winter and where we eat most of our meals. What I would love is a conservatory with a roof of glass as well and I could probably put one on the south side of the house if I win the lottery -- LOL! Martha