Frequently Asked Questions
Since 1979. Located 10 miles S/E downtown Los Angeles, 8 miles N of the Orange County line.
Lighten Up Skylight serves customers from San Diego to Santa Barbara N/S, from the Coast to Riverside E/W.
We work with commercial and industrial business owners, contractors, architects, property managers, roofers, and residential homeowners.
Fixed skylight doesn’t open, is less expensive. Venting hinges and lifts open, manually or motorized.
They are neither better or worse, they are made for different locations, different needs, different desires, different budgets.
They are in all opening skylights.
Only in custom skylights.
The safest. It is tempered over laminated, so if it breaks it will not fall in.
As any other window, and also as a rain-gutter, as the skylight needs to have the debris cleaned out around it before every rainy season.
If they are improperly installed, they will. The skylight itself is the source of leaks only 1% of the time.
Depends on the problem and the age of the skylight. They are replaced 90% of the time.
Skylights eliminate the need to use energy to light a structure in the daytime.
Velux skylights come with shades installed, both motorized and solar powered.
It can take 4 hours, or four days, it depends on the skylight.
Costs range between $1,500.00 and $4,000.00, depending on what has to be done to complete the installation.
What is the difference between an acrylic plastic and Plexiglas skylight? Why would you use one of the other?
When someone asks for one.
Many times. They also qualify a 30% tax rebate, both the cost of the skylight and the cost of the installation.
Most important is what other people have to say about them. The history of complaints with the license board is important. How well they pay their employees is of great importance, as happy workers provide superior work. The quality and diversity of work that you can be presented with in terms of past jobs is also of great importance. The length of time they can truly document as having been in business says a lot as well, as it takes a good and honest contractor to weather the storms time presents.
If references are important, how do I find references other than what the skylight fabricator/contractor provides me with, as they will likely only provide references they know will say good things.
Look at references provided at Internet sites, such as yelp.com and angieslist.com. These are references that are out of the contractor’s control, and can be good or bad.
A low price is suspect as it indicates the contractor pays low wages to his men, or is so new to the field that they don’t know how to price a job. A high price usually indicates just the opposite. The price in the middle can mean either thing. It is difficult to choose based on price alone, but you are taking a great risk to hire the cheap guy, because if the skylights leak and the cheap guy is no longer around to service his work, the damage and repairs to them are usually more than what you would have paid the most expensive guy at the outset.
Though it is rare, I have been asked on several occasions by a potential client to allow them to come to my shop and inspect it to see how clean and organized it is. This goes back to a time before telephones when someone couldn’t just call a reference and inquire about what kind of work a tradesman did, and it was how people would choose one tradesman over another. They would inspect his wagon and his tools, to see how clean and well organized he kept it, if the tools were oiled and sharpened, and make their choice on what they saw.
