Skylights fill your home with natural light, helping make spaces appear bigger and more open. The fantastic view of the sky that they provide can uplift your spirits. They can also make an incredible difference to the aesthetics of your home. But does all this come at the expense of energy efficiency and indoor comfort?
The Impact of Skylights on Energy Efficiency
Unfortunately, skylights can cause unwanted solar heat gain in the summer. The sun’s heat is transmitted to your home through the glass skylight. When this heat warms your home’s interior, it adds on to the cooling load on your air conditioner.
Skylights can also result in heat loss during the winter. Indoor heat radiates through the glass into the colder outdoor air. Remember, hot air naturally rises, so skylights cause significantly more heat loss than windows.
How to Improve Energy Efficiency
You can eliminate skylights to make your home more energy efficient. However, if you want to enjoy the benefits they have to offer while minimizing their energy downsides, use the tips below:
- Placement — To minimize heat gain in the summer and optimize it in the winter, position your skylights at a slope that’s 5 to 15 degrees greater than your location’s geographical latitude. That means the optimum slope for skylights in Lorain, at 41 degrees north latitude, is 46 to 56 degrees. You can also mitigate heat gain by installing skylights in the shade of deciduous trees or adding movable covers on the exterior or interior of the skylights.
- Get energy-efficient glass — Skylights with layers of glass and krypton or argon gas in between reduce the transfer of heat to and from your home. Low emissivity glass (or low-e glass) also diminishes heat loss and gain.
It’s best to only upgrade to Energy Star-qualified skylights. Such skylights have met the stringent qualification requirements — such as solar heat gain coefficient ratings and U factor — determined by the federal Energy Star program.
For more professional advice on improving the energy efficiency of your Lorain home, contact us at Energy 1 Heating & Air Conditioning.
Our goal is to help educate our customers in Lorain, Ohio about energy and home comfort issues (specific to HVAC systems). For more information about other HVAC topics, download our free Home Comfort Guide or call us at 440-201-2959.
Energy 1 Heating & Air Conditioning
1 (440) 246-5440
Serving the Lorain, OH Area