it seems to heat up the living room, and I mean a lot. It is not unusual for the living room to be 8- 10 degrees hotter than rest of house. I have a ranch style house in So. Cal about 4 miles away from the beach. It is a pretty temperate climate. My living room faces south and gets full exposure to the sun. We have dual pane windows and walls and attic are insulated r- 19 minimum. The skylights are 10 -15 years old and 4 ft by 2 ft, they are an opaque white color. recently sealed and insulated the seals.
1. What can I do? I love the light it brings in, house would be very dark without them!
2007-08-26 01:51:10 · 8 answers · asked by Smaht 2 in Home & Garden ➔ Maintenance & Repairs
tint in?
2007-08-26 02:05:32 · answer #1 · answered by Joule 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Outside of having it tinted there is not much you can do with it if you are wanting the light.
We cleaned display homes for years, and always found those skylight rooms to be extremely hot.
A hostess in one of the display told us, that they are also prone to leaking, and a lot of people had complained about how easy it was to get into a house through one of them.
If someone sees a person getting intto a house through a window it is suspicious, but on the roof , they just think someone is having a roof fixed.
2007-08-26 02:10:34 · answer #2 · answered by llittle mama 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋
You say the skylights are 10-15 years old, so they probably aren't very efficient. Have you thought about replacing them with something that allows the light to enter, but blocks the heat? I replaced the old dual pane windows in a home I remodeled with high efficiency windows and it worked wonders. The low-e windows kept the home cooler in the summer and warmer in the winter. They were pricey, but I recovered the cost within a year because of lower heating and cooling bills.
http://www.efficientwindows.org/lowe.cfm
Good luck!
2007-08-26 02:23:03 · answer #3 · answered by Nancy G 4 · 0⤊ 1⤋
Tint the glass or buy some blinds made for skylights. They make skylights that tint themselves. You use a remote control that controls a special gas inside the glass that can go from 0 to 80 percent UV blockage. Some of the blinds are remote control also. Try velux.com.
>tint the glass to block some of the UV's
>a cieling fan to circulate
>blinds. keep them closed whenever possable.
2007-08-26 02:06:56 · answer #4 · answered by charlie s 1 · 0⤊ 0⤋
tinting the glass would cost you a little light exposure but probably wouldn't affect it much. If you don't mind spending a little extra money anderson windows carries glass that is called (low e sun) it keeps uv rays from penetrating through as easily. Otherwise it sounds like your insulation is sufficiant so those are the only options I can think of.
2007-08-26 02:24:30 · answer #5 · answered by stashboxfull 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
They have tinting shades for them, but would defeat the light exposure. What about making a 'window' thats attached to the ceiling - with low e glass to reflect the heat , but still let light in? Or some sort of powered vent to keep it cooler?
2007-08-26 02:05:01 · answer #6 · answered by The Kidd 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
We put bali shades on ours, on the inside. Got them custom sized at home depot. They run in tracks along the sides and work great. You can open and close them to control light and temp. They are a heavy material and block the heat well.
2007-08-26 05:51:52 · answer #7 · answered by renpen 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
ours did the same thing so my wife made a custom fit shade cloth to fit over the out side of the sky light, easy to remove for the winter and summer easy to install, this helps with the heat and still lets some light in
2007-08-26 05:06:15 · answer #8 · answered by willliam d 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋