The Energy Efficient Skylight - Slash Your Daytime Energy Bill
Skylights let the sunshine right inside your house. This brightens up your house in a very natural way. You save a packet on your electricity bill during the daytime.
Wall windows let in just a fifth of the sunlight that comes through a skylight of the same dimensions. That means you get a five-fold benefit of natural lighting and heating, which translates to a commensurate saving on your energy bill.
Natural sunlight opens up closed spaces, making them appear airy and spacious. The smaller rooms of the house, like the kitchen and the living room benefit greatly from this treatment. A skylight for the bathroom is a great way to increase privacy and to make bathing a pleasure in cold weather.
Indoor plants are popular ways of giving the interior areas a bit of the outdoors. But the cost of providing artificial lighting for the plants is sometimes prohibitive. Skylights let you grow plants right inside the house at no cost at all!
Blinds are necessary accessories for skylights. You need to cut down the amount of sunlight streaming into the interior of the house in the summer, and blinds let you do this. You can opt for skylight tints instead of blinds. Tints are protective films that can be applied to the skylight panes to cut down the sunlight passing into the house. Your budget will decide your choice of blinds or tints.
Skylights are designed according to the natural sunlight available in the target geographical location and the orientation of the house. Skylights designed for the tropics will not be suitable for use in temperate zones. If your house has an angled roof, then the orientation is also important to maintain energy efficiency.
The size of the room determines the size of the skylight that is required for optimum energy efficiency. The area of the skylight should not exceed 15% of the room's floor area. If the room receives a lot of sunlight from existing windows, then the area of the skylight should not exceed 5% of the floor area. These are nominal guides and not strict limits.
Skylight installation is best left to professional contractors who have the necessary equipment, experience and expertise in the field. Improper seating and sealing of the skylights can drastically affect the energy efficiency of the installation. Their expert guidance and suggestions will help you extract the maximum benefit of the skylights for your house. Of course, the standard caveat applies, that you should verify the contractor's work record with his past clients.
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