Skylights

I know the store is a bit overwhelming, but have you looked up lately?  We installed skylights.  The manufacturer refers to them as Daylighters.

What a difference.  The colors in the store jumped to life!  Prior to the skylights, the rooms had a metallic feel with a cast of gray.  

The install for 40 something skylights was neat to watch, time consuming, loud, and took a long time.  The weather wouldn’t cooperate.  Every night we would schedule an install, it would rain or snow. 

 

The simple process to add skylights on our store:  

1.  Create a drawing to maximize the light.  We choose the checkerboard layout.

2.  Inspect the layout from the floor of the store to see if the drawing makes sense.  We have a lot of "stuff" hanging from our ceiling.  Several were moved to fit.

3.  The roofing company worked the roof.  They would layout the skylight openings on the roof, cut out the membrane and insulation.  At that point they would run the Milwaukee circular saw through the steel roof.  If you like tools, you will love this saw!  It cuts through metal like its butter!  It was really cool.  :)

4.  Install the curb (basically a metal box with no top or bottom.  It had a lip to screw to the roof.

5.  Install the skylight on the curb. 

6.  Insulate and clean up all the vinyl membranes for the roof and move to the next skylight.

7.  Each skylight took required about 2 hours.

 

Our skylights were installed to be supplemental lighting only.  At some point we may connect some of the lights to sensors that will turn them on and off.  I'm sure some of you will get excited and send emails demanding we install the computers to control the lights with the skylights.  Stay Calm...  we did install new lights when we put the skylights in.  Our kilowatt consumption has dropped significantly.  Controlling the lights is nice but we can do more inside the store to drop our energy consumption.  The light control project is a lower priority.  Some day... 

 

Have Fun!

Phill