Venting Skylights as Passive Cooling: A Solar VELUX Project in East Greenwich

A skylight brings light in. A venting skylight does something more: it lets heat out. On a warm day, hot air rises and collects at the highest point in a house, and a skylight that opens at that point becomes a release valve for the whole home. This East Greenwich home got solar-powered VELUX venting skylights set into a new CertainTeed Landmark PRO roof — daylight and passive cooling in one. Pinnacle roofs go on fast — often as a one-day roof replacement — and flexible financing keeps a project like this within reach, with plans as low as 0% interest for 18 months.

An East Greenwich home received solar-powered VELUX venting skylights integrated into a new CertainTeed Landmark PRO roof, adding daylight and passive, no-wiring ventilation that releases rising hot air from the top of the house. This project is in East Greenwich, Rhode Island using CertainTeed Landmark PRO.

Scope of Work

The project set the venting skylights into a new roof built to carry them. The slopes were built up with ice-and-water shield, synthetic underlayment, and new edge metal, then finished in Landmark PRO shingles. The solar-powered VELUX venting units were set into the roof and flashed with their engineered metal kits and ice-and-water membrane up each curb, so the openings are watertight. Because these units vent, they were placed high on the roof where hot air naturally collects, so opening them lets that air escape and draws cooler air up through the house behind it. The solar panel, battery, controls, and rain sensor are built into each unit, so the venting works with no wiring run to the roof and the skylights close themselves automatically at the first drop of rain.

What We Installed (And Why)

This project is really about air as much as light. A venting skylight opens, and when it opens at the top of a house it taps one of the most useful facts in home comfort: hot air rises. On a warm day the hottest air in a home floats up and pools against the ceiling of the highest room; a venting skylight placed there opens a path for it to leave. As that hot air escapes out the top, it pulls cooler air up behind it from open windows and lower rooms — a gentle, natural draft through the whole house that can noticeably cut the load on air conditioning or, on a mild day, replace it entirely. The VELUX units here are the solar-powered models, which make this effortless: an integrated solar panel and battery run the opening motor, controls, and blinds, so no electrician has to wire the roof, and a built-in rain sensor closes the skylight automatically if a shower blows in while you are out. Because they run on solar, these units and their solar blinds generally qualify for the federal Residential Clean Energy tax credit — worth asking a tax preparer about. All of it sits in a new CertainTeed Landmark PRO roof — the heavier-weight architectural shingle rated to 130 mph with SureStart™ PLUS warranty eligibility — flashed with engineered metal so the venting openings stay as watertight as the rest of the roof. The result is a home that is both brighter and naturally cooler, using the sky and the stack of its own warm air instead of more electricity.

Project Photo Gallery

The East Greenwich home after its solar venting skylight and re-roof project

The new Landmark PRO roof with integrated skylights

Good To Know: How does a venting skylight help cool a house?

A venting skylight cools a house by giving its hottest air a way out, and it works because of a simple principle: hot air rises. In any home, the warm air produced through the day floats upward and collects at the highest point — the ceiling of the top floor, a vaulted room, or a stairwell landing. If that heat has nowhere to go, it builds up and radiates back down, and the air conditioning has to fight it. A venting skylight placed high in the house opens a release at exactly that high point: when you open it, the trapped hot air pours out, and as it leaves it draws cooler air up through the house from open windows and shaded lower rooms. That moving column of air — the ‘stack effect’ — is passive cooling, using nothing but the natural buoyancy of warm air, and on a mild day it can keep a house comfortable with the air conditioning off entirely, and on a hot day it lightens the load and cost of running it. VELUX’s solar-powered venting models make this practical to live with: they run on an integrated solar panel so there is no wiring, they open and close by remote, and a rain sensor closes them on its own if weather moves in. Set into a properly flashed new roof, as on this East Greenwich home, a venting skylight adds both daylight and a genuinely useful cooling tool that costs nothing to run.

Why This Approach Works

Hot air rises and collects at the top of a house; a venting skylight placed there opens a release valve, letting that heat escape while pulling cooler air up behind it. Solar-powered VELUX units make this passive cooling effortless — no wiring, automatic rain-close — and engineered flashing keeps the openings watertight.

Why Pinnacle

Venting-skylight work rewards a contractor who places the units where they will move the most air and flashes them as a sealed part of a new roof, so the comfort benefit comes with no leak risk. As a VELUX 5-Star Skylight Specialist and CertainTeed ShingleMaster™, Pinnacle qualifies our customers for CertainTeed’s full SureStart™ PLUS extended warranty — coverage most contractors cannot offer. We’ve served Rhode Island since 2012, hold a 5.0-star Google rating across 100+ reviews and an A+ BBB rating — see our full credentials.

East Greenwich, Rhode Island

East Greenwich is a historic bayside town of well-kept older homes and newer construction on the hills above Greenwich Cove, many with the vaulted ceilings, upper floors, and contemporary rooflines where heat collects and venting skylights do their best work. A solar-powered venting skylight set into a premium Landmark PRO roof suits both the architecture and the comfort East Greenwich homeowners expect. Explore our work across East Greenwich roofing services.