Solatube Solution

In late 1988, I got a surprise as I was designing the three-story house where I now live. I thought the engineering exercise was going to be mostly about flipping back and forth between span tables in the CMHC Canadian Wood-Frame House Construction guide, and it was, at least at the beginning. But it wasn’t long before I found myself wrestling something harder to deal with than determining proper joist sizes. And, in a word, that unforeseen element was all about interactions.

There are so many interrelated features in a house, and while each exerts an influence on its own, each one also affects other elements, creating a kind of ripple effect. The location of windows, for instance, determines options for locating partition walls. And partition walls affect the layout of a room. Room layout affects traffic flow and determines whether or not a wall can offer some load-bearing support to the floor above or not. And I’m just describing the tip of the interactional iceberg here. The domino effect of inter-connected house details goes on and on.

Good architects keep most design balls in the air and make them work together to form a pleasant home. But even the pros with the fancy CAD programs fumble. And the design feature that’s easiest to lose is the arrangement and placement of windows and skylights for pleasant admission of natural light. That’s why so many houses rely heavily on light bulbs to create a bright, pleasant atmosphere. Even many high-end homes are only a power failure away from widespread dinginess, even in the middle of the day. And solving the common problem of inadequate natural lighting is the best feature of a product you've probably noticed lately called Solatube.

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