Super Slick Solar Home Lighting Design

jchait — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 00:00:00 -0400

Green Home the Environmental Store has these great solar sun tunnel light fixtures available for your home.

I've actually been obsessed with these lights for a while. I'd seen some in action at a friend's home, and sun tunnels in general were featured on the always entertaining, HGTV show, Living With Ed. This show, by the way, has been canceled I believe, which is a bummer, because it rocked. Still, the lights are cool.

The Sun Tunnel is a roof-to-ceiling skylight system. How it works is by channeling sunlight through the tunnel and into a room of your home. It seems like it wouldn't work, but the light is diverted around obstructions and really does work - providing amazingly bright light to a room. It looks like you have really good traditional lighting installed; i.e. you can't even tell it's a tunnel light. The end of the tunnel is covered with a traditional light fixture cover.

This specific Sun Tunnel is very large in diameter (available
in 14 inch and 22 inch diameters), so your home receives more sunlight, and the sun tunnel is perfect for all spaces, like bathrooms, closets, pantries, living rooms, and more. There is a built in double-sealed roof
flashing to prevent water buildup and to supply the watertight
installation you need for a residential structure. The system works on all roofs.

Not only is this an energy saving approach, but natural sunlight is by fr the healthiest type of lighting. Research shows that sunlight can ward off, and even treat health issues like Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD).

Best of all, this is not a high cost or time intensive set-up. This is one of those green building techniques that can be quickly installed and planned for. Total installation time is commonly under two hours. I hadn't heard of these when we were building our home, but you can bet that the next home I build will incorporate this lighting system.

Visit Green Home to learn more.

[Photo: Sun Tunnel via Green Home]

solar design

Super Slick Solar Home Lighting Design