Instead of faffing arou7nd with skylights and flashing why cant I use glass or perspex slates the same size as the existing slates?
Could I cut down scrap car windows?
Has this already been done, with success or failure?
[g]
One of the Grand Designs (the huge pit under the stone barn) used them with solar heating
Good luck required with that, I should think ...
It works. The glass cracks so use wired glass - the result looks crappy from the inside. This could be fixed with diffusing secondary glazing. You may get damp in there though.
NT
Nope they are toughened and will shatter into lots of little bits.
Guess you could use glass but someone has already mentioned how one would clean between them when the algae builds up. Wonder if copper nails and a copper wire along the ridge would keep the algae at bay?
They are available from roofing suppliers for matching several common concrete tile profiles. They may do slate versions too, or you could take a slate along to a glazier and have some glass slates made up the same size, and I doubt that would cost much. You'll probably want the weight of glass to stop them flapping in the wind (don't have them made too thin). Also, you'll need to cut though any lining under the slates to let the light through.
Examine a greenhouse roof. After three years
Form your own conclusion.
Glass tiles were regularly used on old agricultural buildings to allow some light into loft spaces
Is this your house or an (unheated) outbuilding?
Remember how slates are laid in overlap - the result is 2 slates thick. So you will have a crud-collection space between the layers.
Remember also that wind and rain blows up under the slates,and into the space below - or you have a roofing felt.
You'll also have the exposed roofing battens running across you glass slates as well.
You can get glass pantiles, but I've never seen them used in an inhabited space - just lofts and barns, and they let a bit of light through at best.
Car windows are toughened glass and cannot be cut successfully.
Yes, it'd be worse than a greenhouse cos of the gap, it would go green, and hold dampness except on days like this, and be impossible to clean.
drat.
[g]
In article , Andrew Gabriel writes
We had a pane of glass (about 18" by 12") inserted instead of a number of slates to make a skylight at our house in Nottingham. Unfortunately the people who had done it appear to have inserted it without going on the roof and relied on friction rather than some copper straps - hence it regularly slid down!
After a while I made a small skylight myself from a wooden frame and self adhesive flashing strip and the "window" dropped over the frame.
Not impossible in the least. You'd need a thin flat cleaning device, just poke it between the glass slates from the inside. But its never going to look nice & clean.
NT
If they are near enough the right size they won't need cutting, just cut the other slate to fit.
IIRC flat side panels are sometimes laminated or were. They can be cut witha scratch and meths in the scratch set aflame.
Whatever it would be silly not to try. Failing that glass cutters might sell seconds and sheep ends. A thin layer of clear silicon smeared between two sheets would give you a reinforced ply.
If you use a galss pane you must ensure no dopey druggy will stand on it, he might get hurt and sue you.
So 'ere I am sitting on the roof, wiv me 'ammer and bag of copper nails, and the guy hands me a glass slate. So I knock two 'oles in wiv me trusty 'ammer..... No, it'll never work.
R.
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