Multiple Skylight Questions
I’m very bothered by our current skylights for a couple of reasons… they vent, which means leaves and dust come in, along with snow and air, but only a little air, which means you just lose heat and cool, without generating any real airflow. I would love to replace our main skylight over the brownstone…
I’m very bothered by our current skylights for a couple of reasons… they vent, which means leaves and dust come in, along with snow and air, but only a little air, which means you just lose heat and cool, without generating any real airflow. I would love to replace our main skylight over the brownstone stairs with something that is sealed when I want it sealed, and open when I want it open. Has anyone done this? Is it legal to have a sealed skylight, or does the code require everyone to bleed heat / ac through a big hole in their roof? If you do something counter to code like this, do you hurt re-sale value? TIA!
Emperium, thanks for the info. I have been wondering about our setup — apparently the idea is that all the air in the house rises up the stairway, through the stained glass skylight, and into the cockloft. (Air can also travel through the baths and into the sky light without traversing the attic.) Then all that air supposedly exits finds its way out of the cockloft via the air shaft, although I suspect that’s the part that doesn’t work very well. That is the part that has me worried — I wonder if there were originally more vents. Anyway, there are no vents in front or back.
We have no insulation, but our heating and ac bills are actually not that bad. The worst thing is how unbelievably hot it is on the top floor any time the weather is over 90 degrees.
We were thinking of silvering the roof. Maybe we need another vent? A fan? But that will make way too much noise. It would be awesome if it also helped keep birds out.
I spent a great deal of money on a Velux ventilating skylight for my bathroom. It is crap. It never ventilated a thing and is now leaking between the glass and the metal frame – NOT the flashing but the skylight itself.
I have 2 Insuladome operating skylights in my kitchen and although they do not leak, the bronze powder coated finish started peeling within 2 years. Insuladome solution was to paint them – on site, regular paint – thereby creating maintenance for a product I paid a premium for which should have had no maintenance.
I would not recommend either brand.
My brand X stationary mother of all skylights over the stairway has never had a problem.
have two large – triple pane skylights – one above my stair and one in the bathroom. They seal very well and help heat the house in the winter.
In the summer I close the external shade and open them at night to cool down the house. Made by fakro, can source one for you if you would like.
Mopar, your cockloft setup works for a brownstone, it is pretty much a vented roof avant la lettre, but is not efficient at all. You are venting your interior air into the loft through your walls and other openings, which then is vented out through the skylight + the holes at the cornice and gutter. So you lose much heat in the winter and some AC in the summer.
Our stained glass panel over the stair is completely open to the attic, intentionally. That is how it was built. There is a fixed skylight on the roof above. The bathroom air shaft has vents, and they work really well. It’s almost like that ultra high-efficiency set up, where the air is cooled or heated (depending on the time of year) as it enters the building.
We don’t have any attic vents, though — no vents in front or back below the roof — and I have always wondered if that is proper.
For replacements, check out insula-dome. Not especially pretty but ours (both opening and fixed) are super airtight and have performed well for the last 10 years. For the old-fashioned variety, a neighbor of mine used B&B Sheet Metal in Long Island City.
Yes, denton’s right. I have Velux elsewhere and they are great.
One word. Velux.
Can anyone recommend a particular brand of the energy-efficient skylights that they’ve happy with? As well as recs for an installer? We’ve considered putting them in one of our upper levels but we’re always concerned about causing roof leaks. Figure the key is a good installer.
I have one in the hall and two in bathrooms. None leak. But I only have the vents at the end of the roof glass, not the louvers on the side of the high hats.