U.S. Patents on daylight-pipes date back to the 1890's. However, long before then, ancient Egyptians would design daylight-shafts into their massive stone structures and apply gold leaf to make the shafts reflective. This technique worked fairly well but, only the Pharaoh and the wealthy could afford gold-lined shafts. Thus, daylight-shafts would disappear from existence until the late 20th century, when Loren Miller Jr., an 80-year old retired interior decorator from Chicago, Illinois, would start tinkering around with different reflective materials in an attempt to "pipe" daylight through his attic and into his kitchen.
Loren Miller, and his nephew, Greg Miller, worked together from 1989 to 1992 as LGM & Associates. Together, they developed and marketed The SunLight Pipe™, the worlds first practical and truly effective daylight-pipe. Their invention was to become the first of a new breed of energy-efficient products known as tubular daylighting devices (TDD's). Arriving just in time for global warming and upwards-spiraling energy costs, consumers and businesses alike would embrace a new, energy-efficient daylighting technology that really worked, without all the negatives associated with most other daylighting technologies, particularly skylights.
The SunLight Pipe™ became a reality because Loren wanted to brighten up a dark kitchen. He didn't want a traditional skylight because the drywalled shaft which joins the roof-window to the ceiling opening would funnel the daylight straight down to the floor. Later, Greg would realize that there are actually four undesirable characteristics of traditional skylights which the SunLight Pipe(TM) would need to eliminate: 1) the "hot spot" of sunlight on the floor which does nothing to brighten the room; 2) the increase in summer cooling and winter heating costs ($20/sf/yr.) due to the thermal inefficiency and solar heat gain from even the finest double-glazed, argon-filled skylights, 3) the inevitable roof leak that seems to accompany skylights and 4) the 2-3 day installation process (if a drywalled shaft needs to be built). The SunLight Pipe™ had to overcome all these major hurdles in order to be a success. It did!
The SunLight Pipe utilized an aluminum pipe laminated with a film containing pure silver. "It worked beautifully," says Greg Miller, "far better than any other reflective material we tried, even though other materials appeared equally reflective to the naked eye." Top and bottom domes and gaskets were developed to allow the pipe to breathe from the top of the pipe, yet be sealed air and humidity-tight at the ceiling. All domes are made of acrylic and are therefore UV stable (they won't yellow or become brittle from solar exposure). Two pipe diameters and pipe lengths were offered initially, 2-ft and 4-ft lengths in a 13 inch and 21 inch diameter. The 13" pipe was sold for residential use and the 21 inch was sold for commercial and industrial use. An adjustable galvanized-steel roof flashing and storm collar, rated with a 60-year service life, was selected for inclusion in all SunLight Pipe kits for one reason, according to Greg. "I don't want my customers to have any problems. We are asking our customers to cut a hole in their roof to install our product. The hole is a permanent hole. It would be irresponsible for us to give them anything other than a permanent roof flashing."
Top-dome to bottom-dome, the SunLight Pipe's components offered industry-leading performance and durability.
The three basic daylight-pipe designs now available are: "Straight-Pipe," "Elbowed-Pipe" and "Flexible-Pipe."
The SunLight Pipe, and today's SunPipe®, use a straight pipe to run vertically up through the roof. Normally, the straight pipe continues straight down through the ceiling but, adjustable elbows are available for use inside the attic space. The important thing is that the top section of pipe runs through the roof vertically straight. That way, the reflective side-wall of the pipe can do it's job and magnify the light. Pointing the SunPipe directly at the sun will actually reduce output because you are no longer getting the magnification effect. A vertical penetration through the roof will assure you of maximum output and provide surprisingly bright output on cloudy days. Once you get maximum daylight into the pipe, then you can use elbows if you need to.
Elbowed-pipe designs use an elbow at the top of the pipe and at the bottom of the pipe. The top of the pipe needs an elbow because it must mate to the top rim of the roof flashing and one never knows what roof slope that flashing will be sitting on. The flashings of these products are made for the "average" roof slope of 3-1/2:12. Therefore, these products look straight up to the sky only on a 3 or 4:12 roof slope. With steeper roof slopes, the opening of the pipe will look off to whatever horizon the roof slope faces, which further complicates the task of getting you lots of daylight because now the product becomes directionally sensitive. That is, will we be looking to the north (the worst performance), the east (OK for morning-only performance), the west (OK for afternoon-only performance) or towards the south (OK for mid-day-only performance). The steeper the roof, the more the pipe looks towards the horizon. The more the pipe opening looks towards the horizon, the more you "turn off" the pipe and, cloudy-day performance is terrible. With SunPipe®, you get excellent performance on any roof slope regardless of which direction the roof faces and, excellent cloudy day performance.
Flexible-Pipes are even worse because; a) the top of the pipe lies flush with the roof slope, b) the "pleated" or "accordian" surface of the pipe reflects daylight everywhere (including back up the pipe) and c) it is made of a comparatively low-reflective material. Objection "a" means they get installed perpendicular to the roof slope, compounding the problem inherent with the elbowed-pipe. Objections "b" and "c" are totally contrary to the objective of getting you maximum illumination. Case in point... a SunPipe-9 will provide more daylight than a 22" diameter flexible pipe under the vast majority of roof conditions. In our opinion, the flexible pipe should never had been brought to the market.
To illustrate SunPipe's straight-pipe advantage over "directionally-sensitive" designs, imagine a worst-case scenario as depicted in the graphic below;
Top Graphic / Sunny Conditions: On a sunny day, with a steep, north-facing roof (south-facing for readers in the southern hemisphere), the straight-pipe SunPipe® looks straight up to the sky and captures plenty of light from both the sun and the "sky-dome." With a "directionally sensitive" product, sunlight never gets into the pipe and the view of the "sky-dome" is reduced dramatically. That's why SunPipe's average daytime output is always considerably brighter than with competative products.
Bottom Graphic / Cloudy Conditions: On a cloudy day, with a steep roof facing any direction, SunPipe® looks straight up to the sky to deliver every bit of light a cloudy "sky-dome" has to offer, which is usually a lot of light. The elbowed or flexible pipe suffers a signifiicant loss of exposure to the sky-dome. That's why SunPipe® delivers far more daylight on cloudy days.
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The first competitive daylight pipe showed up in the U.S. in January, 1993, two years after Loren and Greg began selling the SunLight Pipe™. It was an imported item from Australia that had supposedly been selling since 1991. The manufacturer claims to be "The Original," yet they have failed to return Mr. Miller's calls to confirm who was actually the first on the market.
It was an "elbowed" pipe design, made from polished anodized aluminum (a material Greg rejected) which used a plastic roof flashing (another material Greg rejected) and falsely claimed a 10 inch diameter (the base measured 9-1/4"). The SunPipe-13 was 20 times brighter than their so-called 10" diameter "tube" until 1995 when they copied SunPipes use of a silver-lined pipe material. "If my product performed like theirs, I would have never brought it to market," says Greg. "Yet they sold tens of thousands of these low-output units with their limited-life plastic flashing to unsuspecting customers who didn't know any better."
In or around 2000, they copied SunPipe technology again by introducing a metal flashing but, they continued to sell the problem-prone plastic flashing. "How can you sell something you know is going to fail and still sleep at night?" asked Miller. "I have a responsibility to my customers; get them as much daylight as I can using materials that won't cause a problem down the road."
Then, in 2004, they began using a new pipe lamination made by 3M Company. It uses no silver. It's made up of 400+ layers of clear film put together in such a way that it is 99% reflective when new... 1% more reflective than Sun Pipe's new Solar Silver-98™ material. But, give it 6 months and the SunPipe material, which hardly looses any of it's reflectivity over a 10 year period, will be far more reflective than theirs. "In 10 years, we speculate that their reflectivity will drop below 89%, very similar to anodized. And, believe it or not, the 3M lamination is not a UV stable material! Why would you manufacture a daylight-pipe using a material that gets destroyed by exposure to daylight?" said Miller with a perplexed look on his face. "It would be like handling hydrochloric acid with cotton gloves... You're gonna get burned. They need a UV-filtering top dome to protect the UV-fragile lamination inside their tube. But, take the UV out of daylight and you no longer have daylight. UV is a crucial part of daylight, and eliminating it removes most of the life-promoting and healthy aspects of daylight. Our new Solar Silver-98™ material is the best we've ever used. It's no longer a lamination. The silver is deposited directly onto the aluminum, then protected with 2 layers of a proprietary oxide coating. It is UV stable and not affected by salt air, a factor very important to people living near an ocean."
The competitor's method of closing the pipe seam was another "issue" with Greg. "They used tape to close their pipe seam. I couldn't believe it. For years they had pipe seams popping open all over the country. So what did they do? They added a second piece of tape. We use a snap-lock seam which can't come apart unintentionally. Yes, it's more expensive to put male and female edges along the length of the pipe but, no SunPipe® customer has ever had a pipe open up on them."
The only problem SunPipes ever had was the top-dome gasket. From 1991 to 1998, a polyurethane open-cell foam tape was used. It only lasted for 6 years or so because of UV exposure. The company knew about this "weak link" and offered free replacement gaskets until a pile weather-strip gasket was introduced in 1998. Again, the company offers free upgrades to all past SunPipe® or SunLight Pipe™ customers. Apart from that, SunPipe has an exemplary track record.
In 1995 a flexible pipe was introduced, also from Australia. It looked like an over-size dryer vent or an oversize Slinky toy wrapped in aluminum foil. Still being sold today, it is the lowest output product on the market. For those of you who have purchased this dismal product, you can double the output by simply sliding one of our 13" dia. pipe sections up inside the flex pipe. A standard SunPipe-13 kit provides almost twice as much light as a 22 to 24 inch diameter flexible pipe.
"It's a bad idea gone worse," says Miller. "You would think the advantage of a flexible pipe would be ease of installation and getting around obstructions in the attic. However, a rigid pipe is far easier to install. You just cut your holes and slide it up. When it comes to circumventing obstacles, only 15% of the jobs we do require our optional, 45º adjustable elbows. Try to take the flexible pipe around an obstruction and you'll lose what little light you had."
Many competitive products need an extra reflector at the top of the pipe to intercept daylight that would otherwise pass by (as illustrated in our above graphic). SunPipe's Straight-Pipe design "intercepts" daylight by the very nature of it's design. That's why it's a straight pipe. We do offer an optional and externally mounted reflector called, SunScoop™, to our customers up north to boost output in December, when the sun angle is very low for them.
Lensed top domes do more harm than good but, they give an otherwise inferior product something extra to up-sell, even though it has a negative impact on performance. The lensed top dome we put onto a SunPipe actually decreased output by 5%. Others use it because without it, they wouldn't have a patent. SunPipe® needs no up-sell. We've been a high-output design since day #1, back in 1991.
You can perform your own test with lensed top domes. It will do the same thing to your vision that it does to sunlight. Move your head along an arc similar to how the sun would traverse the sky while looking at one of these lensed top-domes. See if your vision takes a more direct path down the pipe. What you will find is that the front few facets do work... but, look at all the other facets that don't work. Therein lies the problem. What you'll find is that the other facets interfere with your vision (and daylight) from even getting into the pipe, not to mention being directed down the pipe. Lensed top-domes result in a net loss of output.
Why do they do it? Becausue it will get you a patent and makes you diferent. The underlying attitude of this action is, "Let's decieve our customers into thinking their getting enhanced performance from a patented feature that actually reduces performance. They will never know." That's an attitude Greg wants no part of.
Unless you're going to track the sun, nothing works better than a clear top dome.
Lots of other brands are out there, too. Many of them are produced by individuals that used to be SunPipe® dealers. SunPipe® is not difficult to duplicate, and we don't have a patent. Anybody can copy our design but, they don't. They imitate it, making consumer-grade copies of an industrial-grade original. What is that saying, "Often imitated / Never duplicated?" And even if you were to duplicate the product, there is no getting around the SunPipe reputation. We take care of our customers. Call our customers and you'll swear we paid them off. No one speaks that highly of a company unless they're getting paid... except for SunPipe® customers.
Even though SunPipe® is not the most expensive brand, similar products are available for half the price. Could it be that saving $200 with a different brand could cost you $400 a few years from now? In many cases, yes, but, $400 may be conservative. How much does it cost to get a guy to come in and replace a roof flashing that failed? Add to that the cost to repair a water-stained ceiling or even to replace a section of drywall and then, repainting. How much to replace or fix that oriental rug that's all wet, or the stereo that got dripped on? But to heck with the financial costs of an inferior product, how about spending $300 on something that gives just enough daylight to be disappointing, compared to $600 for a light source you will love more, 5 years from now, than you do today?
We consider it our duty to tell you what to watch out for (after all, it's a jungle out there). Things like; taped pipe seams that pop open after a few years, a plastic roof flashing that may warp or crack and leak, top domes that yellow or become brittle, pipe materials that are less reflective or not UV stable, ceiling diffusers that are flimsy and not gasketed, plastic domes that are screwed to metal flashings which can fail from stress, diffuser domes that are held in place by the gasket squeezing into the pipe (a friction-fit), lensed top-domes... the list goes on. Any of these inferior designs could easily result in that "cheaper" product costing you a lot more than if you used the original, high quality, high output SunPipe® from the start.
"We've been doing this for 16 years... longer than anyone in the business (we did invent the product, after all). Even our very first 1991 customers have never had a problem (actually, the top dome gasket had to be replaced) and their SunPipes look and perform as good today as brand new ones do. If that doesn't justify your decision to buy a SunPipe®, nothing will."
