From Mother Earth News:
If you’d like to light your home naturally and efficiently, consider installing tubular skylights.
With a clear, domelike lens that gathers sunlight and transmits it into a room via a ceiling fixture and a highly reflective piece of tubing, they are ideal for retrofitting bathrooms, hallways or walk-in closets. Some models even come with flexible tubes, so you can snake them around obstructions in your attic. And you don’t have to be Bob Vila to add them to your home — most do-it-yourselfers can install one in a couple of hours using common tools.
Tubular skylights cost about $200 to $500 uninstalled, and are highly efficient: one 21 inch model, for example, produces about 13,900 lumens under the right conditions — the equivalent light output of six 48-inch, 40-watt fluorescent lights.
Even on cloudy days, a tubular skylight can provide at least as much light as a 100-watt incandescent bulb. The natural sunshine tubular skylights provide is also much more attractive than the light of their bulbous brethren.
For locations that require constant illumination, tubular skylights are especially economical: one 10-inch tubular skylight, providing an average of 4,200 lumens of light for eight hours each day, will save you about $70 annually.
To purchase a tubular skylight, or for more information, contact one of the companies listed below:
Bristolite Tubular Skylights
(800) 854-8618
www.bristolite.com
ODL Tubular Skylights
(800) 253-3900
www.odl.com
Solatube Skylights
(800) 966-7652
www.solatube.com
Great information. I think more people should consider these skylights for closets and hallways. They eliminate the need to turn on the light and consume energy.
ReplyDeleteI found a great list of other tubular skylight manufacturers at http://www.getwithgreen.com