Tips for Installing Skoolie Skylight School Bus Hatch

Adding a skoolie skylight into your school bus conversion, especially a large emergency hatch skylight, can provide a large amount of light into your skoolie so you can use less electricity throughout the day. This is very important for those of you looking to live with your skoolie off-grid for longer periods of time. Conserving energy is usually the number one priority, next to watch conservation.

When it comes to building and installing a skoolie skylight, there are several things you need to consider. Here are a few tips to building a skoolie skylight.

1. Make sure you decide how many skylights you want to have ahead of putting in your ceiling. Once you install your ceiling into your school bus conversion, it will cause a ton of extra work if you want to add in a skylight after the fact.
2. Be sure that your skylight can stand up to the weather you'll be living in and the hurricane speed winds that occur while you are driving. The dome style skylights used on the Skoolie Livin school bus skylights are the best option, as they can withstand a great amount of weight from snow, have a flange to screw and seal the skylight to a wood frame, and there are both white, fogged, and semi-clear options.Check out the complete skoolie skylight for school bus conversion hatch for more details on the skylights they used.
3. Try to attach the frame of your skylight to the cross ribs in the ceiling of the bus. This can be somewhat hard because of the extra lip on your school bus ribs that flairs out for the exterior metal to rivet to the ribs of the bus, but with some light engineering you will be able to attach the frame you build for the skoolie skylight right to the frame, allowing it to be much stronger against those winds and weather.
4. Once you are done installing a skylight into the school bus hatch, you should then use window flashing and a rubber sealer to paint over the flashing and window frame, so you can make sure everything is 100% waterproof.
5. Finally, check your skoolie skylights regularly for leaks! The last thing you want to have is water leaking in and running down the inside of your school bus ceiling and causing mold, rust, or many other issues inside your bus. To check for leaks, simply spray a hose onto the area and have someone inside looking for leaks. It is also not a bad idea to have removable panels around your school bus conversion skylight so you can remove those and check behind the frame for water leaks in a school bus conversion.

Hopefully these tips for installing your skylights into your school bus conversion will help you with knowing what to watch out for and to prevent from making any mistakes that will set you back in your build.