Sometimes in home ownership you make costly mistakes. Case in point: We close our skylight too tightly.
We have an opening skylight in our bathroom. It opens and closes with a big pole that you turn the handle and it cranks open.
When we had one of our cold snaps I walked into our bathroom to find out skylight had shattered. Don’t worry, it was just the inside piece of plastic (they’re double layered with air in the middle for insulation.) The skylight has a screen, which luckily caught all the jagged pieces of broken plastic.
It still caught me completely off guard. Who knew skylights could just shatter? Why did it happen?
We called our roofers and they assured us that it wouldn’t leak or anything, and it was marked as a low priority. Flash forward to the bitter cold snap we’ve been suffering from (grrr polar vortex grrr). Because it is just sooo darn cold out, and nice and toasty warm inside, we were getting a whole lot of condensation on our now uninsulated skylight. The condensation was dripping down onto our floor and making puddles. We called the roofers back, they upped the importance and scheduled a site visit on one of the coldest days of the year. Upon inspection they discovered that we appear to have tightened the skylight too tightly, and when it expanded with the cold it broke.
A new skylight was ordered, and it was safely installed yesterday taking all the broken pieces of plastic and condensation with it.
Our pocket is lighter, or egos a little bruised, but at least we have a drip free skylight back in our bathroom.
While talking with the roofing company we learned the following:
Only JUST close crank windows & skylights. Over tightening can warp the frame and put pressure on the glass/plastic risking breakage.
DON’T CRANK THAT SOULJA BOY!
On the positive side, dude I’m the freakin HULK. I am so strong my muscles break skylights!!!!