Lanai Room Clarity
 

When you glass in a lanai, what has to be done to make that square footage part of the overall square footage???? thanks, there are many different opinions?

Rich, I am not sure what you are asking, but if you are in Sumter county, there are five (5) classes of lanai enclosures. Classes 1, 2, and 3 cannot be heated or air conditioned, classes 4 and 5 can be. There are increasing requirements for each class. This can get very confusing, so I suggest you stop by the building department and ask for the above document(s), then discuss with whomever you are thinking about using for your project.
NOTE: you cannot do a class 3 project, and then later go to have HVAC installed, so you need to get this right the first time.
Please feel free to send me a PM with your phone number if you would like to discuss further, we just completed our project about 4 months ago.

If I understand you correctly you will get to pay more in real estate taxes if you do this.

Hello there. There shouldn’t be different opinions, villagetinker is correct, as usual, there are county building requirements that determine the classes of your room. They also need to be permitted in an appropriate order so I would follow his guidance. The reason your taxes could/will (?) as well as your sales price, go up is that you are legally adding square footage to the size of your home, pulling out your sliding door between them and creating a room with air/heat. I am sure you are aware it is a construction project with several tradesmen involved because of this.

I have heard that there is a difference between putting in an air conditioner to cool the lanai (creates additional taxable space), and putting in an air conditioner to remove humidity (no new taxes).

That could be false, but I am not sure either way. I'm sure someone here can add good info.

They install a heat pump for heating and cooling, and refer to it as a dehumidifier to deceptively define the real purpose of the heat pump. Does this fool anyone? I doubt it, but who knows?

Also, the county appraiser's job is to estimate the actual market value of property for tax purposes. They often use square footage as one factor to assess the value. But, I don't think there is any law that constrains the appraiser on how they determine the market value.

We just had our lanai glassed in and if we wanted to add a split air to it, we would have had to bring the lanai floor up to the same level as our inside floor by pouring cement into it. We’re in Lake Denham but the best thing to do is call your city hall and ask them directly as the laws absolutely do differ according to where you live. We’ll use a little space heater which so far works great, and in the summer we’ll open the doors and use misters/a swamp cooler like we did in Las Vegas. Works beautifully!

Not accurate info. There are 5 classes of a lanai enclosure but you can put in a mini-split in any 1 of them by classifying the unit as a dehumidifier. It’s the same mini-split heat pump but with a dehumidifier switch.
I glassed in my lanai with double pane windows, raised the concrete floor to match the height of the house floor, installed electrical, Ethernet, and rg6 cable in the floor and in the corner posts, insulated the attic above the lanai, laid the same tile that is in the house, installed Mitsubishi mini-split dehumidifier, and my taxes didn’t increase a penny. Added almost 400 sq ft to the house.

Gracelane, Florida summer humidity is way different than Las Vegas. Adding misters/swamp cooling in a semi-confined area is likely to lead to mold/midew issues in that area. Just something to consider.

I lived in Vegas and the swamp cooler worked great. However with all our humidity it is not nearly as efficient here.

The key factor is the sliding doors to the house. If you remove them then the extra square footage is included, leave them in and it is not.

It does not matter if you raise the floor or add a mini split just leave in the doors.

If you add square footage they can reappraise your house to market value negating your homestead exemption of no more than 3% per year.

I just got finished doing the same thing, I also removed the sliders. The appraiser was here a couple days ago. I guess I will find out in October if my taxes go up, or if I’m lucky like you, and they don’t.

At age 74 when we moved into our Foxglove Courtyard villa we did not want to invest any crazy amount into the lanai. We enclosed the lanai with double insulated sliding glass windows atop concrete block kneewalls, removed the sliding glass doors into the bedroom to add another insulated bedroom wall, insulated the lanai ceiling, installed sun blocking window shades. We simply leave the sliding door between the living room and lanai open. Works just fine.

Please reference where this came from.

If true one should buy a bigger house and keep their homestead benefit by applying it to the new house - called homestead portability.