Solar Light Tubes
Solar light tubes bring natural daylight into interior rooms with no exterior wall. Hallways, closets, laundry rooms, pantries and interior bathrooms, the spaces that are dark at two in the afternoon with every light off.
They are also called sun tunnels, light tubes or tubular skylights. Same product.
Call About Solar Light Tubes
How Solar Light Tubes Work
A dome sits on the roof and collects daylight. Below it runs a tube lined with highly reflective material, usually down through the attic, ending in a diffuser flush with your ceiling.
The dome is optically shaped to capture as much light as possible and push it down the tube, which is why a tube roughly a foot across can light a whole hallway. The reflective lining loses very little light on the way down.
Most residential tubes run 10 to 14 inches in diameter, with larger sizes available for bigger rooms. Because they are narrow, they fit between roof rafters without cutting into the structure, which is a large part of why they cost less to install than a skylight.
Why They Suit Tucson
The heat question is the one we get asked most, and it is a fair one in a city that ran 112 days above 100 degrees in 2024.
A solar tube brings in far less heat than a skylight of comparable brightness. The opening in the roof is small, and the light travels down a tube rather than through a large pane of glass sitting directly over the room. You get the daylight without much of the heat gain that makes people nervous about putting a hole in the roof.
They also handle flat and low slope roofs well, which matters here, since a lot of Tucson homes have no pitched plane to work with at all.
Solar Tube Or Skylight
Both put daylight in a room. Which one is right depends on the room.
A solar tube costs less, installs faster, fits between rafters without structural work, brings in less heat, and can reach rooms nowhere near an exterior wall. It cannot be opened, and it gives you light rather than a view.
A skylight gives more light overall, opens up the ceiling visually, gives you sky to look at, and comes in venting versions that let hot air out. It costs more, needs framing work, and brings more heat with it.
The short version: small dark rooms take a tube, larger living spaces take a skylight. Plenty of Tucson houses end up with both.
Options Worth Knowing About
Night Light Kits
A small electric fixture built into the tube, so the same opening gives you daylight during the day and a normal light at night. Useful in a hallway or bathroom where you would otherwise still need a ceiling fixture.
Dimmers
A control that reduces incoming light, for bedrooms or anywhere you want to cut brightness at certain times.
Diffuser Style
The ceiling fitting comes in different finishes and diffusion levels, which changes how the light spreads and how the fitting looks from below.
Ventilation
Some models can also pull air, which pairs well with an interior bathroom that has a weak fan or none at all.
Installation And What It Involves
On a house with attic space, the tube runs from the roof down through the attic to the ceiling below. The straighter that run, the more light arrives at the bottom, so where the dome goes on the roof is not arbitrary.
On a flat roof there are extra steps, because the dome has to sit high enough above the roof surface that water is diverted around it rather than pooling against it. That is a roofing detail, and getting it wrong is why some tubes leak.
This is where over 30 years of roofing experience matters. The tube is straightforward. The hole in the roof is the part that has to be right.
Repair And Replacement
Solar tubes need very little maintenance, but they are not immune to Arizona sun. The acrylic dome on the roof will eventually yellow or craze the same way a skylight dome does, and when it does the light coming through goes dim and slightly discolored.
That is usually a dome replacement rather than a whole new unit. If your tubes have gone dull over the years, it is worth a look before assuming they have simply stopped working.
Blocked or damaged flashing at the roof line is the other thing we find. Same as with any skylight repair, the leak is almost always at the roof, not the unit.
Which Room Are You Trying To Fix
Tell us which room is dark, whether there is attic space above it, and whether your roof is flat or pitched. That is usually enough for us to tell you whether a solar tube is the right answer.
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