Traditional Skylight FAQ's
None. Plexiglas is a brand name for acrylic plastic. Another popular brand name is Lucite.
Plexiglas bubble skylights are light, efficient, and inexpensive. They are particularly well-suited to flat roof installations since they shed water so well and gather light from many angles. Their light weight makes them easy to get up on the roof. Often the bubble shape allows for increased head room. They are quite modern in appearance and may not be suitable in certain architectural environments.
Forming Plexiglas into a bubble shape dramatically increases the strength of the flat sheet of plastic and helps to eliminate expansion and contraction, which can be detrimental or fatal to a skylight over time.
Clear, white translucent, and solar bronze tinted plastic are the three primary choices.
For any flat skylight the optimal material is glass. Any glass skylight we manufacture for you will be composed of safety glass.
Most glass skylights will be composed of tempered safety glass or laminated safety glass or a combination of the two. We also manufacture skylights of clear or obscure wired glass. Your local building codes will indicate what type of safety glass is required.
Tempered glass is heat-strengthened glass like the glass in your shower doors and patio doors. It is very strong, but, if it breaks, it explodes into thousands of tiny pieces. The side windows of most cars are tempered. Laminated glass is glass with a plastic interlayer which is designed to hold in place when it breaks. The front windshield of your car is laminated. In the San Francisco Bay Area, where we are located, building codes call for laminated glass as the interior piece of glass on any glass skylight, other than wired glass units. Laminated glass has the extra advantage in that it is a very effective block of ultraviolet light which is the leading cause of fading.
More and more skylights are being made of Low-E (for low emissivity) glass. Low-E glass was originally developed for energy efficiency, but it has the additional benefit of blocking heat gain as well as heat loss through a skylight. It provides a very comfortable light without darkening the skylight such as in the use of tinted glass. Either tempered glass or laminated glass can have a Low-E feature included. There is also Low-E2 (or Low-E squared) for even greater benefits. It is a denser version of Low-E which is slightly darker in appearance and was designed for even greater thermal efficiency.
Yes. All the skylights we make can be made to open for ventilation either through manual means (hand crank or pole operation) or electrical activation.
Yes. Our skylights were specifically designed to be converted to opening units if the customer changes his mind. The skylight must be brought in to the shop and can usually be converted for a reasonable charge.
Yes. Properly installed skylights can be removed if they are curb-mounted.
Curb-mounted skylights are the most common of all skylights. A curb is simply a wood box that is build higher than the roof and sealed to become part of the roof. The skylight is then dropped over the curb and attached from the outside.
Yes. We manufacture pyramid and double-hip shapes in either material.