The Press of Atlantic City

Today’s skylights no longer leaky plastic bubbles

-By JOHN S. SALADYGA

Sun worship did not die out with ancient civil-izations. It may not take on the same form now, but Old Sol is as revered today as ever - especially in the home.

The open floor plans and glass walls so integral to new construction and renovations have one major purpose - to flood interiors with light. And when big banks of windows are impractical, insufficient or esthetically inappropriate, we look up to let the sun shine in from above, through skylights.

Not the poorly constructed plastic bubbles of the past that popped up from rooftops like lumps and sooner or later were bound to cloud up and spring a leak. In fact, that virtual inevitability kept the popularity of residential skylights down until new designs and improved manufacturing made them more attractive, versatile, durable and, most impor-tantly, watertight.

The old plastic skylights leaked because of poor flashing systems that let water run under the unit and into the home. Or, wide swings between day and night temperatures, especially in cold weather, caused expansion and contraction, and ultimate failure, of inferior gaskets and plastic components, allowing water to leak through the skylight itself.

Advanced flashing and state-of-the-art materials, however, have eliminated such problems.

Quality stressed

"The biggest misconception people have of skylights is leaking. Properly installed units don’t leak," says architect Garrett A. Strang of Southfold, N.Y. But, he adds, "Everything is relative to the skylight you purchase." In other words, you get what you pay for. Thus, quality buys peace of mind.

The price without instal-lation of quality ranges from less than $150 for a small, fixed, acrylic unit to about $450 for a large, insulated, opening one, and even more for specialty or custom units. Adding top-of-the-line accessories such as motorized openers, automatic shade or blind controls, sensors that close the skylight when it starts to rain and remote controls can more than double the price.

Of course, there’s more to putting in a skylight than filling a hole in the roof with a piece of glass. A major consideration is what purpose it will serve, and that sets off a domino effect of other questions. Where should it go? What about size? Is the skylight only for light, or will it also be used for ventilation? Should it be glass or acrylic plastic, clear or tinted?

Skylights generally are used to provide natural task lighting in rooms such as kitchens, dens and home offices; to light windowless spaces such as bathrooms and hallways or to supplement the light from windows illuminating the back of a large or deep room that doesn’t get sufficient light from windows alone, for example.

They are less expensive than dormers as a way of getting light and air into attics. And, strategically placed, they can do double duty in passive-solar installations by both providing light and directing it at tile or stone floors to produce heat.

Another frequent candidate for a skylight is a bedroom because of the romance of gazing at the stars and the sense of sleeping under the sky.

But architect Lawrence Laguna of Oceanside, N.Y., cautions against indis-criminate installations in bedrooms. He cites the experience of a client who insisted on a skylight in a small bedroom against Laguna’s advice. It took only the first hailstorm to drive the bedroom occupants up the wall and realize what Laguna meant.

"A skylight is a bad choice for over a bed or in a small bedroom," says the architect.

Remember, too, that regardless of which room a skylight goes into, the location may be restricted by barriers such as electrical lines, heating ducts or structural framing. Moving the location is less costly than rerouting utility lines or making structural changes.

A rule of thumb concerning size is to buy a skylight with an area 10 percent to 15 percent of the area of the floor in the room, says Leslie Devore, a spokeswoman for Velux-America Inc., a major manufacturer of skylights.

Improvements in glass permit the use of large areas of glass without mullions, which are support strips used between panes of glass. Single-pane units of up to 25 square feet are possible, says Artie Ortmann, manager of sales and marketing at Insula-Dome Skylights in Yaphank, N.Y.

Beyond that, custom multi-pane units must be used, or smaller single units can be ganged up side by side or above and below each other.

Glazing options in good-quality glass skylights provide insulation, shield rooms from the sun’s ultraviolet rays and create a buffer against outside noise. The simplest glazing consists of two panes of tempered safety glass separated by a space filled with argon gas, which is denser than air and provides better insulation and noise abatement than air.

A step up is a double layer of argon-filled, Low-E glass, which is coated with a virtually invisible film that keeps the sun’s heat out in the summer. The best glazing consists of an outer pane of tempered glass, a pocket of argon gas and an inner layer of laminated safety glass.

The laminated glass behaves like a car windshield: I will shatter but will not break and rain down into a room the way standard tempered glass can. In addition, laminated glass keeps out almost all of the sun’s damaging ultra-violet rays that fade furniture, carpeting and drapes.