[VAC] $5 Skylights

[Dan Weeks <theprofileco@xxxxxxx>]

For five bucks in plexi and a few more in rivets, I turned my three roof
vents into skylights, and love the results. Here's what I did:

My center vent had a white translucent plexi piece riveted onto the top of
the vent--I don't know whether this was original or a previous modification.
It had been damaged and taped over with aluminum tape. I pulled off the tape
and the old plastic, made a template of the plastic, took it to the local
hardware store, and had them duplicate it three times in 3/16" clear plexi.
They cut it out, ground the corners to radius and all for $5.30. Then pulled
off the other two roof vents, used the one with the existing hole to scribe
lines on the other two, sabre-sawed out the opening, filed the edges. Then
punched and drilled 1/8" holes every 1.5" around the edge of the opening,
ran a THIN bead of Vulkem 116 caulk around the edge, and riveted the plexi
on over the caulk bead. Cracked one ever so slightly where the caulk was too
thick when pulling one rivet tight, but otherwise no problems. Couldn't find
closed-end rivets with the right grip range, so just dabbed the top of the
rivets with a bit of vulkem. They're tight, really lighten up the interior,
and cost a hell of a lot less than the $57/per vent Airstream quoted me for
plastic translucent vent covers. Plus, it's cool to look up and see clouds
and stars. Whole project took a couple hours. The plexi is exactly the same
dimensions as the flat top part of the vent cover; the cutout follows the
outline of the edge of that flat part, a half-inch in from the edge,
allowing the plexi to overlap the aluminum half an inch. Since it follows
the original contour and the rivets are neatly and evenly spaced, it looks
like the cover came that way. While I had them apart, I buffed up the inside
of the vent covers to a nice shine, and oiled the opener mechanism.