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at a recent art festival, we came across a booth showcasing solar tube lighting, something i’d been interested in for a while. we signed up for a professional installation of solatube solar lighting by solartex, a local austin dealer. i’d researched solar tube lighting in the past, but found the notion of cutting holes in my roof a bit too daunting for a self-install.

the very friendly solartex installer, aaron, mentioned he could teach me how to install them myself if i was interested. little did he realize i’d then be following him around with my cameras, documenting his every step…he was a great sport and grinned throughout my pestering.

the result is a how-to photo essay of professional solar tube installations:

first, one must choose the appropriate size solar tube for the room. solatubes come in 10 and 14 inch sizes. we decided on a 14 inch solatube for our kitchen / breakfast room area. it gets some natural lighting from north and south windows, but we end up using overhead lights in the morning and early evenings.

here’s the kitchen with natural lighting from north and south facing windows

ensure you have ample room between joists in the ceiling, then make a center point hole with a drill

draw and cut out a 14 inch circle

eyeballing the center of the circle, use a measuring tape to find a matching center point on the roof

drill a hole from the attic, then find the hole on the roof. use the dome skirting to trace another circle.

cut circle piece from the roof

installer hint — when you get close to completing the cut, grab the piece so it doesn’t fall through your ceiling below!

remove roofing nails around sides & top of hole

cut shingles to create water channel

caulk the underside of the dome housing to ensure a watertight seal. he used two tubes on this one.

lift loose shingles and place dome housing under

screw down to roof

measure distance to ceiling below

build reflective tube to length using solatube’s “spectralight infinity” sheets

here’s the solar tube with the protective plastic still in place

once plastic is removed, the tube makes a great fun-house lens

attach the top section of the tubing

insert the tube down the dome skirting & screw into place

just look at that Raybender® 3000 Technology!!!

dome’s fresnel lens

install metal reflector in northwest corner of lens to grab more rays

attach dome lens to roof mount. that’s it for the roof!

there is an amazing amount of natural sunlight pouring down the tube

slide ceiling mount up and tighten screws into place. reflective-tape the seam with the tubing in the attic.

add diffuser plate. the solartex installer gave us two options for it.
one was a flat diffusion. we chose the multi-lens option which looked waaay cooler…

using the exact same camera settings as the first kitchen photo, this photo illustrates a quite significant increase in light!

with auto settings, here’s the kitchen after installation of Solatube light

we’ve been enjoying our solatube natural lighting for weeks now. it’s amazing how much light the tube directs into the room…we still catch ourselves turning around to “hit the switch” on our way out of the room… i would highly recommend the solatube natural lighting skylights to anyone looking to add a bit of “green” lighting to their home.

rebar pentagons: a time lapse of me welding on my first metal yard art piece
pattern inspired by ice-ray chinese lattice design