A skylight can give the room more lighting, views, ventilation, and often even emergency egress. When your energy efficient skylight is properly installed, it can help minimize your cooling, heating and lighting costs.
What to consider for your skylights design
Before deciding which skylight you want in your home, you will need to determine what type of skylight is going to work best for you and where to put it in order to optimise its contribution to your homes day-lighting, energy efficiency and ventilation.
Skylight selection
It’s recommended that you fully understand the energy performance ratings of skylights so that you are able to select your skylight based on your home’s design and the local climate.
The actual size of the skylight your installing will greatly affect the temperature of the space below and the illumination level. As a rule, your skylight size should never exceed 5% of the rooms total floor area when there are already many windows, the skylight should also be no more than 15% of the rooms total floor area when there aren’t many windows.
It is also a good idea to consider a skylight’s position when maximising passive solar heating and/or day-lighting. If your roof is facing north, your skylights will provide fairly constant but cool illumination. Those that are on east facing roofs will provide solar heat gain and maximum light in the morning. When your skylight is south facing it will provide the best potential for desirable winter passive solar heat gain than all other locations, but it will also often allow unwanted heat gain when it’s summer. By installing a skylight in the shade of deciduous trees or by adding a movable window covering on the outside or inside of the skylight, you will be preventing unwanted solar heat gain. There are some skylights that have special glazing that will help control the solar heat gain.
At Sundowner Skylights we offer a wide range of skylights for all homes and buildings. Visit our website on www.sundownerskylights.com for more information on the installation process and the benefits that installing a skylight can have.