Tubular Skylights Do Work

My family couldn’t disagree more with the comment you received about the quality of light from tubular skylights [see feature in EBN

Vol. 8, No. 10, and letter in EBN

Vol. 8, No. 11]. We had two Solatubes installed last month: one in a fairly dark kitchen, and the other in an interior windowless bathroom. They passed both the “spouse” test and the “child” test with flying colors.

It’s a dreary day outside in a suburb of Washington, D.C., raining off and on all day, and yet the tubular skylights are still bright. The same is true right before sunset. I’m amazed. Both skylights provide ambient lighting, not task lighting. My wife still turns on the overhead stove light (one of the few incandescents in our house) when cooking. But we turn on the overhead lights much less frequently. My daughter has remarked on a couple of occasions that she wants to turn off the bathroom light—but it’s not on! But the real benefit is that the house feels much more “heavenly.”

Our neighbors had four Solatubes installed several weeks before we did, and they have nothing but rave reviews as well.

From an energy standpoint, I realize that we just had two holes punched into the roof of our airtight, well-insulated house. The tubular skylights were not insulated, but I easily insulated them with fiberglass batts. Now, if the manufacturer would just take a cue from the skylight manufacturers and develop a better glazing than the single-paned diffuser.

John Lippert, President

Eco-Living, Inc.

Greenbelt, Maryland

P.S. I have no commercial interests in tubular skylights. One other comment both my daughter and neighbor have expressed is that they provide moonlight at night! Apparently, they sometimes act like a small nightlight if the moon is bright.