Is your home a bit cold and dark in winter months, or feeling stuffy and dark in summer time? Often, when your homes windows are too small or you don’t have enough of them, it can be hard to get the ventilation and natural light you need for good health. You may look around your home or building and think, “this place could definitely use some more light and windows” but you don’t have an idea if it is even feasible to add them or even where to get started.

For most homeowners, cutting a whole n your roof or wall can be scary to even think of, but adding in a window, skylight or roof window is not always as difficult as it may seem.

Furthermore, properly installed skylights, windows or roof windows can be a very rewarding way to improve a home’s air quality, healthfulness, energy and visual appeal while also making it a more pleasant place to be each day.

If you aren’t sure what type of skylight or window you want or need, here are a few basics:

Vertical Windows

Unless you are living in a bunker, your home will most likely already have vertical window, and their support structure was incorporated into the walls when your home was built. It should be an easy task for a professional to replace an under-sized vertical window with a bigger one.

Roof Windows

The more traditional windows will admit light at the walls level, while a skylight will bring light into your home from above. Roof windows are somewhat a hybrid in that they will combine some of the top qualities of both skylights and vertical windows.

Skylights

Very often, skylights are the daylighting solution of choice for rooms that have limited wall space, but they can also be an attractive, practical and cost effective way for you to increase the natural light and passive ventilation in any of your rooms.

At Sundowner Skylights, we supply a wide variety of great quality skylights for you to choose from. For more information on our products and services, visit our website on www.sundownerskylights.com.

Skylight are known to brighten up dark rooms, even if it is a small unit it can make a great difference in the way that room looks and feels. There are many styles and brands to choose from. It is advised to try avoid the inexpensive units that have plastic glazing. Although these units cost less initially, they usually don’t last very long and many of them tend to leak. It is better to have a look at the higher quality curbed skylights that are energy efficient glazing and have a factory flashing kit made for them. The kit is not going to add a lot to the cost of the skylight but it will mean having a leak-free installation.

Many skylights can come as venting units, which are able to open or as fixed units that cannot be opened. A venting unit is great to have but it might be inconvenient to open and close if it is out of your reach. So unless you are installing the skylight in a place where it will be easily accessible, you should probably rather go for a fixed unit and save some money. This also applied to installing a skylight in a bathroom, where you will also have to ensure that there is enough ventilation in order to avoid condensation problems. A vent fan for a smaller sized bathroom should provide 1 cubic foot per minute of air circulation per square foot of floor area, or more or less eight air changes per hour.

Generally, skylights are available in sizes that will fit the standard 16 or 24-inch frame. Installing a large skylight will mean that the installer will need to cut one or more of your rafters in order to fit the unit. This installation process is pretty simple when the roof is conventionally framed, which means the rafters on the sides of the rough opening are doubled up and the headers are added at the top and the bottom of the opening. However, it is different when working with a truss roof. The trusses are carefully engineered to carry roof loads, and modifying them in the field is not always a good idea. If your home is built with trusses, you should ensure that the installer sticks with units that are made to fit in between roof members, or gangs many smaller skylights together in order to create a larger window.

In South Africa extractor fans are not as common in our homes as they are in a lot of other places in the world, because we still the options to open our windows all year round but as development changes, so do our homes. This makes extractor fans more common, especially in public bathrooms. But they exist for a reason and they have great potential in many room sin the home as well as in the business.

What Extractor Fans Do

The name, ‘extractor fan’ is relatively self-explanatory.  It is a fan that works to slowly pull the current air out of a room, and all the things that are in the air at that point in time. It works for taking hot, moist or stale air out of a room, as well as any odours that may be present at the time. The purpose of an extractor fan is to help control an environment that does not have much ventilation or needs help with it.

Extractor Fans in the Bathrooms

Extractor fans in a bathroom have so many advantages. Firstly, it helps keep the dust at bay if it is working often. This does require some cleaning from time to time. It removes the different odours that float around. It helps remove a lot of steam from baths and showers, this means that extra moisture will not be as present in the room, and the mirror will not steam up as much as it used to, and it will clear up much quicker. By eliminating the humidity and steam, you are reducing the birth of dangerous moulds. And that is great for your help in its own way.

Getting an Extraction Fan for Your Home

There are no reasons to not have an extractor fan in your home or in your business. They are applicable in rooms other than the bathroom. Get in contact with Sundowner Skylights, to find out about getting an extractor fan in your home or office, or even if you wish to invest in natural light through the use of a skylight.

So you’re thinking of getting a skylight; you have one or you’re about to get one. You’re excited to have a fresh new feeling within your home. You know all about the health benefits that come from having a skylight, like that it’s better for your eye sight, and the natural light helps with mental illnesses such as depression. You also know about how you’re saving money and the planet by not using as much electricity. There are nothing but practical and logical reasons to get a skylight in the different rooms of your home. However, there are other ways to enjoy your skylight.

Skylights in the Lounge

So you’re getting a skylight in your lounge, and this will bathe your furniture in a natural glow that you’ve only ever dreamed of. You know you might have to rearrange some things to accommodate the changes in light. But while you’re moving tables and plants and couches, think about how you’ll use the light. Think about places where you can read and drink your tea on a weekend morning and how you’ll want that light around you. Consider placing your stuff so that you can have warm sunlit naps in the winter, or where you can lie down and look up at the stars when we’re visited by load shedding.

Skylights in the Bedroom

Maybe your bedroom is your private sanctuary and you prefer to read or listen to music in there. Your skylight is there to listen to those nostalgic or those honest songs while basking in the sunlight or even the moonlight. Do your writing, your painting or song writing in a little piece of heaven that is now your own. You could spend a lovely Sunday lazing around in comfy slippers and watching the world around you change as it readies itself for the week ahead. Stay warm on those sunny but icy winter afternoons while you lie under the blanket unwinding after a stressful week and enjoying your own company.

Get That Skyline in Your Home

If this sounds appealing, be sure to bathe your home in a light that in untainted by burglar bars, or a view unobstructed by some billboard or someone else’s carport. Install the best skylight for your home and your needs, visit Sundowners Skylights to brighten up your home, in a way that nothing else could.

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.

Energy Efficiency:
Skylights are a huge help when it comes to cutting down on the earth’s emissions and also the need for more electric lighting naturally. Using daylight as your home lighting not only helps reduce energy costs and consumption, but it also helps reduce the demand for unsustainable power that is challenging the health of our environment.
• Fortunately solar energy does not produce harmful emissions and it doesn’t require transportation or pipelines like your electric energy does.
• Solar energy is a unlimited resource
• Solar water heating systems that are installed in the U.S. assist in reducing our household energy consumption, along with the nation’s reliance on toxic fossil fuels.

Optimal daylight:
Most people try to find homes that have a lot of light, because we require 2-3 times more light to see by the age of 60 as we did in our twenties. All types of skylights can assist in balancing light in the rooms of your home or office, reducing the glare and also transforming living areas into more open and safer places.

Save Money:
When it comes to skylights, you will be saving money through lower energy bills. Energy efficient, high quality skylights are a very important part of creating today’s green homes. Skylights, sun tunnels and roof windows reduce lighting costs and energy consumptions. Venting skylights will minimize the need for an air conditioner and fans during the warmer months.

Ventilation:
An electric venting skylight will open in order to produce a “passive air conditioner”. Through the exhaust or chimney effect they create, the warm air gets drawn upwards through the venting skylight, providing a cooling effect and fresh air throughout your home.

Privacy:
Houses are being built closer to each other and the balance of providing privacy and sufficient natural light is becoming an issue. Which is why 65% of people who want to buy a home will ask for light form above through skylights in their bathroom, where privacy and light is usually very important.

Add life to small spaces:
The conventional incandescent bulbs will create a unnatural yellow glow, sun tunnel skylights will bring a brighter, white and healthy daylight into rooms where traditional skylights are not always an option. The reflective property of a tubular skylight in your home can also help in reducing your HVAC load by utilizing the natural power of the sun in order to bring passive light, light without the heat that is emitted by electrical sources.
For highly professional skylight installations in Cape Town, visit the Sundowner Skylights website on www.sundownerskylights.com

One of the greatest benefits of putting a skylight in your home is the decreased use of energy and electricity in lighting. Electric lighting for buildings consumes 15% of all energy usage and is a significant cost to both individuals and the environment.

Using a skylight makes your home more energy efficient and environmentally friendly, which not only saves you money, but also makes your home more striking to buyers if you’re planning to sell in the future. Sun tunnel skylights provide a natural and sustainable alternative to conventional lighting.

Any interior designer knows that lighting can make or break a good space. Installing a tubular skylight not only helps you to tie together the natural daylight to illuminate your home, it also helps to efficiently disperse the light for a bright, warm and welcoming atmosphere that pervades each corner of the room.

There are scientific studies that show an increase in the benefits of natural sunlight on health and wellbeing. Suitable daylight reduces eyestrain while reading or working on a computer, and effectively stimulates the human visual system. If truth be told, humans have an inherent need for natural sunlight, and skylights allow you to experience the gentle fluctuations in sunlight that stimulates the human circadian system, controlling sleep and wakefulness.

Studies have shown that people who are regularly exposed to sunlight are more optimistic, sleep better at night and have a higher sense of health and well-being.

Getting a good dose of daylight can boost your mental function and memory by 10-25%, according to most studies conducted. In a range of studies, students were found to perform around 20% better on their tests after a year in rooms with higher levels of daylight. Natural sunlight stimulates your mind, boosting alertness, concentration and focus on the tasks at hand.

With the effective use of skylights, you can reduce your energy bill by 15-40% savings that can really make a difference to your family budget. Tubular skylights allow you to lower costs by reducing electricity use, as well as saving on light fixtures and bulbs that break and regularly need replacement. Sky lighting is by far the more environmentally and pocket friendly option.

Skylights not only bring beauty and radiance to your home, but a natural sense of wellbeing and productivity, while helping you save your money and the environment. Visit Sundowners Skylight and become part of an eco friendly family.

Are you increasing your text size on your phone or computer? holding your book farther and farther away from your eyes? welcome to the club. As you age, it is inevitable that your eyes and vision will begin to change. It is important to care for our sight and to responsibly exercise our eyes. One way to take better care of our eyes is to avoid dimly lit settings. As we get older, well-lit spaces will make reading and other tasks easier.

Lighting as we age

According to the American Optometric Association ,healthy eyes become much more sensitive to the light and glare as we get older. Aging eyes are going to require more contrast to see than before, as well as greater illumination levels.

There are certain types of light that can be beneficial to us as we age. For example, uniform ambient lighting between rooms help older eyes, as you age your eyes take longer to adjust to the changing light levels. Furthermore, as we age, our eyes start to restrict the amount of light absorbed and admitted and they become more sensitive.

Increasing light inside the home

When you are indoors, you should try to bring in as much natural light as possible. Whether you’re raising blinds, pulling back curtains or installing skylights. Allowing more natural light into your home will prevent eyestrain when you’re completing those close up tasks. Skylights will admit sunshine from above in order to achieve a more balanced, diffused light throughout the space. Installing skylights in the kitchen, hobby area or living room will be beneficial as these spaces are usually used for task-oriented projects and entertaining where substantial illumination is a must. A balance of ambient light and daylight, with the addition of table and floor lamps is going to make your rooms much more comfortable.

There aren’t many lighting options that will light up your home quite like a well placed skylight will. At Sundowner Skylights we assist in brightening up your home with the very best quality tubular skylights, a favourite among those who would like to maximise the natural light in their homes. For more information visit our website on www.sundownerskylights.com.

The difference between artificial and natural light is highly for people to know, especially if their profession depends on it(i.e. photographers and farmers). Below is a breakdown of the differences between the two types of light, and the effects they have on us.

What are the properties of artificial light?

Artificial light is of course man-made light, which isn’t completely bad for the development of plants and humans. It differs to natural light because we can control it and we can monitor the quality of light, thanks to physics. It also doesn’t have the same spectrum of colours and wavelengths as natural light does. Therefore, if the frequency of the wavelengths is too high, it could be very harmful to humans and plants. Bridge fluorescent lights have also been found to aggravate some illnesses such as headaches nausea and eye strain.

What are the properties of natural light?

Natural light, also known as sunlight, comes in a spectrum of colours which are visible rays. Waves that aren’t visible to us on the colour spectrum are shorter wavelengths, named ultraviolet rays and higher wavelengths, known as infrared rays.

Exposure to sunlight can help build vitamin D in the human systems. However, it can also increase your energy, boost your metabolism and give the immune system a boost, which is all important for the body. Although, it is important to get the right balance as overexposure may cause problems to the human system, such as skin damage and cancer and cataracts.

Plants are great beneficiaries of natural sunlight. The light helps them grow, and the darkness that follows is just as important for them to rest, repair and rejuvenate. This light and dark effectively balances the cell activity.

Ideally, we would all like to be exposed more to the benefits of natural light without the fear of over exposure. Because this is not feasible, artificial light is now an essential part of our lives. Although it does not have the same benefits as natural light, with technology enhancing and becoming so advanced.

Companies like Sundowner Skylights specialize in the balance of natural light in homes, their unique skylights are made from solid reflective aluminum with your choice of a flat or curved diffuser or dome to collect and radiate sunshine, giving you access to more natural light for longer.