Shining Some Light on Skylights

Skylights let natural light stream into your home, bringing warmth and a feeling of spaciousness. When properly selected and used, they can reduce your need for electric lighting and minimize your heating and cooling costs. There are also health benefits to this wonderful sunlight that shines on us. 

If you lack sufficient sunlight on your skin, you will suffer health effects. That's because the human body was designed to be exposed to sunlight on a frequent basis. We evolved, after all, under the natural sun, not under fluorescent lighting. Our environment was one with plentiful sunlight.

Skylights can provide up to 30% more natural light than vertical windows while making a small space seem bigger.

A skylight is like a window which has been placed in your roof. It has a frame specially designed to withstand rain and prevent leakage from rain and snow. To maximize a skylight's use of natural light to illuminate a room or its passive solar heating potential, you will want to take into consideration how a skylight is positioned.

Facing north, your skylight will provide fairly constant illumination, but will not provide a lot of heat.

Facing east, it will provide the maximum amount of light and solar heat gain in the morning.

Facing west, your skylight provides afternoon sunlight as well as heat gain.

A skylight facing south provides the greatest potential for winter passive solar heat gain than any other location, but will often allow unwanted heat gain in the summer. This heat gain can be minimized by installing your south-facing skylight in the shade of deciduous trees or adding a moving window covering.

Skylights come in all shapes and sizes. Its size greatly affects the illumination level and temperature of the space below.

As a rule of thumb, the size of a skylight should never be more than 5% of the floor area in rooms with many windows; and no more than 15% of the room's total floor area for spaces with few windows. Dept. of Energy.

Glazing
Like windows, skylight manufacturers use different types of glazing to improve their energy efficiency. The glazing comes in three different forms.

Plastic glazing - This type of glazing is usually inexpensive and less likely to break than other glazing materials. However, these surfaces scratch easily and can become brittle and discolored.

Glass glazing - This is found in the more expensive skylights. It is more durable than plastic and does not discolor. All glass used for skylights must be made of "safety glazing," a generic term for both tempered and laminated glass more info. Tempered glass is the most impact resistant. Laminated glass is fabricated with a thin layer of plastic embedded near the center of the glass. Both types keep the glass from breaking into large, sharp pieces. Skylights are often made with a tempered glass on the exterior side and a laminated pane on the interior side. This arrangement gives maximum impact resistance while protecting occupants from falling shards of glass.

Solar heat control glazing - Manufacturers use various glazing methods to reduce the impact of summer time solar heat gains and winter time heat losses. These come in the form of heat-absorbing tints, double and tripled paned skylights and low-emissivity coatings.