Post and beam construction, also known as mortise and tenon construction, is one of the oldest and sturdiest methods of building a home. Instead of using nails to hold the posts and beams together, a sort of peg, called a tenon, is cut into the end of one beam and a corresponding hole, or mortise, is cut into another beam or post. The two are fitted precisely together to form a remarkably durable joint which we then finish securing with heavy-duty lag screws. In fact, post and beam construction significantly reduces the affect of wind on a structure, ideal for homes with greater exposure to the elements, such as here in New England. Houses built hundreds of years ago using this method of construction are still standing today.

But strength is just one advantage of using post and beam construction. Another benefit is beauty. Post and beam construction — also called by yet a third name, timber framing — leaves the post and beam frame exposed rather than covered up with drywall or some other construction material. The result is an aesthetically-pleasing architectural feature that speaks volumes about the quality and durability of the construction work. A sunroom built using post and beam construction is one that will last a lifetime and beyond.

But we’re still not done. Post and beam construction also provides better insulation and energy efficiency because heat can’t travel as easily through the walls. Aluminum frame construction easily conducts heat in and out of your sunroom, so warmth during the winter gets sucked out of your sunroom, while outside heat gets easily transferred inside during the hot summer months.

We use special Split Silver Titanium Glass in all our sunrooms. Our coating and tinting formulas are optimized for the harsh New England climate so they perform well under a variety of weather conditions and temperatures while maintaining optimum insulating properties all year round.

Split Silver Titanium Glass is incredible stuff – it uses eleven different materials that are applied to the glass by a metal vapor deposition process, providing superior energy-efficiency and comfort during all seasons.

But what really sets us apart from the competition is our proprietary glazing system utilizing a structural silicone to more-efficiently seal the glass to the sunroom’s exterior for simply outstanding reliability and longevity. Unlike the rubber seals used by the competition, our silicone seal stays flexible for years and is unaffected by UV rays.

What does this mean to you?  You don’t have to worry about rainwater leaking into your sunroom or  cloudy glass caused by poorly sealed glass.  That means you’ll be able to enjoy crystal clear views from your Brady-Built sunroom for many, many years.

Do you have a unique glass request or requirement? We offer a wide range of high-quality, two-pane insulated glass from Guardian Industries, the world’s largest glass manufacturer, finished with our proprietary glazing system.  In fact, we work with virtually every major glass manufacturer, so if you have a preference for the glass used in your sunroom, we’d be happy to get it for you.

Whether you choose high-performance Split Silver Titanium or superior insulated glass, you’re assured peace-of-mind with a Brady-Built sunroom, crafted from the finest materials available.

The short answer is “yes”, if they’re designed and constructed to handle weather extremes. Every Brady-Built sunroom and conservatory is carefully manufactured in our own environmentally-controlled factory in Auburn, Massachusetts. Because our sunrooms and conservatories are specifically designed and manufactured to stand up to years of exposure to New England’s harsh weather, they remain comfortable and enjoyable year-round.

What enables our sunrooms to handle the New England environment so well? It starts with the materials we use – solid wood. Not vinyl, aluminum, or plastic. We use solid yellow pine and other species chosen specifically for New England conditions. Wood is warmer, stronger, more durable, and versatile than any other material – and it just looks better. Wood has better insulating properties, too, which means it stays cooler in summer and warmer in winter.

The glass used in your sunroom or conservatory is another critical component if you want to be able to use your sunroom or conservatory year-round. That’s why we use Split Silver Titanium™ glass that’s been optimized for the New England climate. Then we seal it with a special proprietary glazing system that offers the lowest seal failure rate in the industry.

The result is a beautiful, durable, solid sunroom or conservatory that’s not only comfortable year-round – it adds value to your home and more fun to your lifestyle.

We admit it – there are some people who think “factory-built sunroom” is synonymous with cheap, cookie-cutter construction and shoddy workmanship. Nothing could be further from the truth – at least not at Brady-Built! We strongly suggest that our customers – or anyone considering purchasing a sunroom – tour our factory to get the facts on factory-built sunrooms. Perhaps the best reason to tour our factory is because that’s the only way you’re going to be able to check out our sunrooms up close – all of our sunrooms and conservatories are built-to-order, so we don’t have a showroom!

Factory-built sunrooms and conservatories are far superior to on-site, “stick-built” models for many reasons. At Brady-Built, we have our own, environmentally-controlled factory that enables us to control every aspect of construction – starting with simply keeping our craftspeople comfortable and happy while they work, instead of being distracted and rushed by harsh, uncomfortable weather.

More than that, manufacturing sunrooms in a controlled environment enables us to maximize the environmental properties of all the materials we use – from maintaining optimal moisture and temperature during wood lamination, to controlling the cure rate of glues and sealants for weatherpoofing. Try doing that when you’re rushing to build a sunroom onsite, in summer’s relentless heat and humidity, or during a fall rainstorm, or a winter snow storm.

So to best tell the factory-built story, we think it’s important that all our customers actually visit our factory. Then they can see for themselves how a controlled environment enables us to manufacture the highest quality sunroom or conservatory possible. Once they understand that, they wonder why anyone would buy anything but a factory-built sunroom.

Every Brady-Built sunroom and conservatory is manufactured right in our own environmentally-controlled factory in Auburn, Massachusetts. Why? Because the only way a sunroom can be built to the highest quality standards is to do it in a controlled environment where it won’t be exposed to adverse weather or be constructed with materials that may have been compromised by being exposed to outdoor conditions for any length of time.

Our sunrooms and conservatories are designed and built specifically for New England’s harsh weather, so it stands to reason that if we constructed them on site, there would be a very good chance that some part of the process would be exposed to snow, ice, rain, humidity, heat, or cold. Any of these conditions can change the properties of the materials or, in many cases, enable moisture to get into the structure itself during construction, encouraging problems further down the road, such as mold, rot, or mildew.

By building sunrooms and conservatories in our environmentally-controlled factory, we have complete control over every aspect of manufacturing – from optimum temperatures that enable glues and sealants to cure properly, to comfortable working conditions that enable workers to perform at their maximum efficiency, unaffected by summer’s heat and humidity or winter’s freezing, damp conditions.

We encourage all our customers to come tour our factory and learn more about how we carefully manufacture each and every sunroom and conservatory. Once you see the Brady Difference, you’ll understand why we’ve earned our reputation as New England’s leading sunroom manufacturer.

Why Laminated Wood?

When considering the purchase of a sunroom, there are many decisions to make.  What the sunroom’s structure is made from is one of the most important from a practical as well as an aesthetic perspective.

Extruded vinyl or aluminum are commonly used to build the frames for sunrooms.  Both materials are very resistant to rot and require little maintenance but have the look and feel of a poor quality product.  Furthermore, sunroom built from vinyl or aluminum are “stick” built on-site with very little control over quality due to the variability of the skills between one technician and another.

Laminated wood sunrooms offer several advantages.  There is little doubt that wood looks “warmer and richer” than either of it’s competitors.  In fact, wood is literally warmer because it is a much better thermal insulator than either aluminum or vinyl.  The color and grain patterns in wood are beautiful.  Laminating wood to form the beams takes advantage of the beauty of the wood and enhances its structural qualities.  Sawn timber beams are weakened by knots and other natural variations in the wood.  When wood is cut into thin laminations and then glued together to make up a full thickness beam, the knots and other “defects” are limited to only the thickness of each lamination.  Since the natural flaws don’t line up from layer to layer, the effective strength of the beam is not impacted.

To protect the beautiful wood from the elements, the exterior surfaces of laminated wood sunrooms are clad in aluminum extrusions.  This technique offers all of the advantages of wood and aluminum.

Since wood is an easily machined material, it makes customizing the sunroom easy.  Manufacturers of aluminum and vinyl sunrooms will not customize their rooms to fit special customer requirements.  Building sunrooms from laminated wood makes customization a natural benefit.

Solar screens, the best way to manage sunroom temperatures year-round.

There are many competing claims by sunroom manufacturers about glass.  Some claim to have the “best” glass in the industry, others claim that their glass blocks out most of the sun’s heat in summer; others say theirs allows most of the sun’s warmth through in the winter.  Like so many things in life, you can’t have it all.  Magic glass is a myth.  Designing glazing systems is a science that requires a clear understanding of what it will be used for, what qualities are most important and where compromises can be made.  Glass, if not modified, allows most of the visible light spectrum to pass through and has virtually no insulating value.  What this means is any light that passes through the glass will strike another surface (inside your house or sunroom) and either be reflected or absorbed.  The light that is absorbed is converted into heat energy (remember the conservation of energy law from high school physics class?).  This heat in the winter is desirable and in the summer can make the room uncomfortably hot.

Since un-modified glass has no meaningful insulating value, most manufacturers of sunrooms offer “insulating glass”.  This is an assembly of two or more plates of glass that are separated by spacers,  The void in-between the sheets of glass is filled with a dry gas, most often argon.

Engineers have developed a set of values that allow us to compare the insulating qualities of one product to another.  In this system, a single sheet of glass has a “U” value of 1.0.  When two sheets are assembled with a small gap in between (usually less than ¾”) that is filled with dry air the U value is about 0.60.  In this system, the smaller the number, the better the material’s insulating qualities.  The insulating properties of the glass assembly can be further improved by using argon gas (less conductive than air) and by using non-metal spacers.  The standard insulating glass used by Brady-Built Sunrooms has a U value of 0.24.  Brady-Built offers as an option, triple glazed insulating glass that has a U value of 0.12.  These glass options are state-of-the-art in glass manufacturing.

The insulating glass panel described above helps to improve the sunroom’s insulating properties so that on a cold cloudy day or at night, the heat loss through convection and transmission from the sunroom is reduced.  To make the glass even better at reducing heat loss from your sunroom a coating is added to the glass that helps reduce radiant heat losses.  This coating, called a low e (for emissivity) coating reflects selected wavelengths of light (usually in the red to infrared spectrum).  The insulating glass with an argon filled space helps reduce convective and conductive heat loss, the low e coating adds significantly to the glass’ insulating performance by addressing the only other means of losing heat.  Obviously the measures described don’t eliminate heat loss from the glass; they simply reduce it to the extent possible without compromising the glass’ aesthetic qualities.

What about those hot summer days when any heat gain is objectionable?  Some sunroom manufacturers imply that their glass allows the greatest warmth inside the sunroom during the winter months, while preventing significant heat gain in the summer.  This is impossible.  When heat gain is objectionable, glass is modified by adding tints to the glass itself or by coating the outside pane of glass surface with a thin metal coating to create a reflective mirror surface.  Sometimes both methods are used in the same insulating units.  Scientists have come up with a system to measure this characteristic as well.  It is called the Solar Heat Gain Coefficient (SHGC).  Like the U value system, the lower the SHGC, the less light is allowed through the glass and therefore the less heat gain in the room.  Brady-Built uses a glass assembly with an SHGC of 0.385.  Most other sunrooms manufacturers use glass with a SHGC of 0.15 (meaning much less light gets through).  What this means is in the winter months, the Brady-Built Sunroom will warm more quickly on a sunny day and will be comfortable at much lower temperatures with less dependence on auxiliary heat sources.  In the summer months, use of the removable Brady-Built externally mounted solar screens, in combination with the standard glazing will prevent 90% of the heat gain that would otherwise occur.  The solar screens act like an artificial shade tree without blocking views of the sky.  Other sunroom companies depend upon dark tint for most of their heat gain control.  The problem with this approach is you lose a significant percentage of desirable heat gain in the winter and though it reduces the solar heat gain coefficient in the summer, it does not reduce the actual heat gain as much as the lower SHGC numbers suggest.  The dark tint absorbs light, preventing it from entering the sunroom directly, but that absorbed light is converted into heat energy and the hot glass warms the air in the room.  Using externally mounted solar screens causes this waste heat to dissipate into the air outside of the sunroom.

Brady-Built Sunrooms have been designed with hot summers and cold winters in mind.  Our glass, manufactured for us by Guardian Industries, has been designed to give Brady-Built Sunroom owners the optimum comfort and energy efficiency when used with Brady-Built Solar Screens.

It's pretty "clear" that Brady's Glass will let in more sun

Property values have plummeted with the massive foreclosure rate that still plagues the U.S. in this current economy. Homeowners who have had the good fortune to keep their residence are looking for ways to increase their home and property value in hopes that if they do decided to move that they might get back their initial investment. There are several ways to increase a home’s value.; A new coat of paint, better insulation, and one that seem to be growing with popularity the solarium.

The word solarium is often used when talking about tanning beds, but for this purpose, that is not the case. Solarium in this instance refers to the room made completely out glass, including the roof. The floors are usually ceramic tiles to maximize the absorption of the sun. The subtle colors and cool texture are a serene addition to the solarium. The front of the room often has a curve appearance, which differs from a traditional sunroom, in order to allow the glass its full sunlight potential. This glass is specially tinted keeping out the harmful rays, but still allowing for all the benefits of the sun to come through warming the room and its inhabitants. Keeping in mind that the sun’s rays are just as strong coming through a solarium as if outside in full exposure, so wearing sunscreen is recommended for lengthy periods in the solarium.

When thinking of adding a solarium or sunroom to the home, it is extremely important to make sure, that the new edition blend naturally into the homes original style. Having an add on solarium or sunroom that represents an entirely different style than the home that it is added too will look tacky and odd, taking away from the value of the home rather than adding to it. Brady-Built Sunrooms are experts in this area and have architects on staff for consultation and design purposes, helping to make the solarium or sunroom look as if it was part of the original home structure.

These additions are used as sitting rooms, dining areas and just about anything these days, but no matter what it is used for it creates an ambiance that no other room in the house can compare to. Whether it is letting the suns warmth kiss the skin or staring at the sky in the twilight hours, there is romance, originality and escapism with this at home sanctuary.

Brady-Built Sunrooms often recommends a helical screw foundation for the installation of
sunrooms as an alternative to a concrete pier (often called a Sonotube) foundation. What is it and why use it?

First; it is best to understand what a concrete pier foundation is. A concrete pier foundation requires the excavation of a hole large enough to accept the pier form (usually a cardboard tube).The hole must extend to below the frost line, which in most of New England is set at 48” by building code. Depending upon soil conditions and the weight of the structure that the pier will support, a flared bottom is sometimes required on the pier. This is achieved by using a plastic form under the cardboard tube form that gives the pier an upside down ice cream cone shape.The hole for this type of pier is significantly larger than a straight tube pier. Once the hole is dug, the forms are put in place and back-filled. Before concrete can be poured, the local building inspector must confirm that the foundation depth is adequate and that the soil conditions are suitable for the load that the pier will support. Following inspection, the forms can be filled with concrete. Once the concrete has set for 2 to 3 days, construction on the new foundation can begin. The whole process, from digging through inspection, pour and cure can take a week or more. Besides the time it takes to complete the process, the large holes required for each pier (most sunroom require at least three piers) cause a great deal of damage to landscaping and other yard features.

A helical screw foundation, as the name implies, is a screw that is fabricated from a very heavy gauge steel tube with a thick steel plate welded to the bottom. The steel plate is set at a down-ward angle and wraps around the steel tube like the thread on a screw. A small wheeled machine, about the size of a large snow blower, is brought to the installation site. The helical screw foundation tube (I’ll call “the screw”) is connected to the machine. Once secured, the machine positions the screw and applies pressure while turning it. The steel plate at the bottom of the screw bites into the soil and begins pulling the screw into the ground. Once the bottom of the screw reaches the desired depth, the post is tested to be sure it exceeds the specified bearing capacity. This process is repeated for each support location.

The helical screw foundation offers a number of advantages that are especially important on some jobs. It causes very little damage to the yard since there is no excavation required. Additionally, the machine that installs the screws was designed to be able to drive over lawns without causing damage. The screws can be installed in places where excavation may not be possible. The entire installation process takes only a few minutes per screw and does not require inspection by the local building official. This reduces the time between start of project and commencement of framing. The helical screw foundation is especially good on construction sites near wetlands, because the process does not result in loose soil that could cause silt runoff.

The helical screw foundation has been tested by independent authorities and has been approved for use on any building by all US building codes.

Harsh winters filled with unforgiving storms that during the coldest months of the New England year seem unyielding can make even a lifelong resident of this unpredictable region wonder why he/she hasn’t made the move to sunny California.Perhaps the mild, short summers open the way for the familiar smells of autumn. Cool winds, wood stoves and magic in the air are what make New England residents suffer through the trials of weather to reap Fall’s reward. The crunching of the leaves under sneakers while the crisp air kisses the face needing only a sweatshirt and jeans to brave its season, autumn never seems long enough.

Sunrooms though mainly considered a summer idea have gained popularity with New England residents. Perhaps it is the innovations in glass technology that allows the New Englander to have options where there once was none. Even as early as 15 years ago the idea of a sunroom made entirely out of glass on a New England home was preposterous. It would be as if the resident was asking for it to be shattered, cracked or destroyed. Temperatures under 0 degrees, icicles falling, and what seems like infinite pounds of heavy snow would have scared off the home owner from having anything more than an enclosed porch or screen house that could be disassembled when the bad weather was about to begin its tyrannical season.

This is no longer true. Companies such as Brady-Built Sunrooms offer some amazing options for the hesitant New England resident. The selling point being a way to expand an existing home and add value to the structure, but the thing that ensures confidence is the silver titanium glass system. This glass is tempered, specially tinted and perfectly insulated to guarantee maximum performance and solid durability. Keeping things cool in the summer, warm in the winter and just right come those cozy autumn nights. Easily removable glass can make way for screens to let in some of the cleansing air while keeping out all the critters that may want to temporarily lodge in such a spectacular room.

No longer do scores of New Englanders have to wonder what it would be like to have a glass structured sunroom, they can make it a reality and with numerous designs and layouts to choose from. Brady-Built Sunrooms assures that this revolutionary glass is made to withstand the elements, while being able to watch them from an at home luxury box.