VELUX® Customer Service Center
Greenwood, South Carolina
Skylight installer: Lloyd Roofing
Products: Model TCR VELUX SUN TUNNEL™ skylight for commercial applications
The benefits of daylight on human performance and human psyche are well documented. Confirmed by several studies on the benefits of daylighting designs in retail space and school environments, there is no doubt that people perform better, learn faster and are more effective under natural lighting conditions.
The product:
In May 2004, VELUX launched a new addition to its product program, the commercial SUN TUNNEL skylight (Model TCR 022). This product is a tubular skylight specifically designed for commercial spaces with flat or low-sloped roofs and interior finishes composed of either suspended or sheetrock ceilings. This product is made of a highly reflective telescopic tunnel with an adapter box at the bottom that sits within the existing suspended ceiling grid. Elbows at the roof level and at the ceiling level ensure that the product can go around obstacles in the plenum space and a prismatic diffuser at the ceiling level ensures smooth diffused lighting conditions at task level.
The Model TCR is a completely modular product. It is composed of roofing components (dome, flashing and elbow), ceiling components (adapter box, prismatic diffuser, bottom elbow) and pre-assembled tunnel components (rigid, reflective telescopic tunnel). Any number of tunnel parts can be connected together to accommodate any plenum run between 3 feet and 30 feet.
The project:
The administrative building in Greenwood, SC is built like so many other commercial buildings in the US – a big box with vertical windows along the perimeter and virtually no daylight at the core of the building. This building houses the customer service, accounting and IT departments.
As was thoroughly documented in the studies conducted by the Heschong-Mahone Group, daylight has a strong influence on human performance in general. Whether it be in a school or retail environment, people work harder, perform better and are happier under daylit conditions.
The customer service team is the company’s first window to the outside world. How they treat customers and fulfill their requests is one of the single most important building blocks of a corporate image. In remodeling the customer service center, the primary objective was to make sure that all customer service representatives along with other corporate staff would have access to plenty of daylight during work hours.
Because the building’s existing design included a suspended ceiling over the entire interior and vertical windows around the perimeter, the only way to bring daylight into the building was through tubular skylights. This is where the commercial sun tunnels came into play.
The results:
The results have been incredible! Despite having a 12-foot run between the roof and the ceiling, the lighting output is great and generates approximately 50-foot candles on average at task level. The light is diffused so it does not generate “hot spots” or glare on computer screens.
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By all accounts, the office atmosphere has been completely transformed for the better, and since the entire office has not yet been remodeled, it is very easy to compare the day lit area with the areas illuminated only by electrical lights. The area under the Commercial Sun Tunnels is brighter with whiter light, making the office appear more spacious. |
Commercial SUN TUNNEL skylights have a great lighting efficacy ratio, which means that they generate more light and less heat than the electrical fixtures previously used. As a result, when the lights are turned off (as they usually are during the day), the commercial sun tunnels generate less heat and maintain or reduce the building cooling loads – all while saving electrical energy by having the electrical fixtures turned off.
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