I saw some installed and fell in love with the concept. Then my BIL installed some in his steel roof. Worked fine intil one winters day the snow started to slide and sheered them off, dumping snow on his kitchen floor. Dealer replaced them and added some form of "snow break" that only worked until the next winter.
Been through that. I have a low-pitched standing seam steel roof. Came home to find one sheared off, we had a heavy, heavy wet snow. I had snow fences put above mine, and so far so good after 4 winters. Maybe the low pitch helps with that, snow doesn't get up as much speed probably.
My snow fences clamp on the standing seams with a set screw arrangement. All stainless, so they were not cheap. In hindsight, it was silly to think a piece of plastic was going to survive a snow slide on a metal roof, but hindsight is always 20/20 :laughing:
We have 3 10" SolaTubes, I think they are great, in my case they dump natural daylight into rooms in the rear of our earth-bermed house. I have had visitors try to figure out how to turn the "lights" out
The downsides I have encountered are they get buried when we have a decent snowfall, so I pull the snow off with roof rake. Our roof eave is about 4' off the ground, and the tubes are about 8' up the roof, so no ladder is required. But still, it is a task added to cleaning up after a storm.
One tube has been outsmarting me, it leaked during a heavy rain last summer. I refreshed the caulking around the flashing, it had some cracks in the old caulk. All was fine until two weeks ago, leaked again in downpour.
The caulking looked okay, I thought the water must be forming a standing wave above the vertical part of the flashing and going up under the dome seal. Put some caulking there. Had another heavy rain and it leaked again. I plan to take the hose up on the roof and see if I can duplicate what happens, but I may not be able to put enough water down to mimic a downpour. We've had light rains since, it only leaks in a really heavy rain, and wind doesn't seem to be a factor.
Over all, I think they are barely durable enough for northern climates. I would hate to give mine up, but they would be easy to take out and all that would be noticeable is a patch on the roof.
There is an old thread somewhere on SolaTubes, or they were cussed and discussed at length within a home construction thread.
