AirLight Skylight Insulator review
With summer and camping season closing in on our calendars one of the things we all think about is air conditioning. Keeping our rigs cool is and less humid is something we all think about, some more than others. In fact Jim Phelan of Airskirts thinks about the inside temperature of RVs quite a bit and now has a second product to help with this, the AirLight.
The AirLight is a new product from AirSkirts and I also wrote an article about using AirSkirts during winter when the inflatable barriers to protect the underside of an RV are most important.
The AirLight is an inflatable air barrier that you insert into your skylights or high-performance ceiling fans to help keep the inside air and the outside air from co-mingling and reducing the effectiveness of either the heater or air conditioner.
Think about all the effort placed into making RV ceilings as insulated as possible. As some of us shop for RVs we look for the “R” value of the ceiling and do as much research as possible into how well insulated the rig is. Then we ignore the fact that there’s those skylights with their thin plastic covers which significantly reduces the RV’s ability to keep heat or cold inside.
That’s where the AirLight comes in. Essentially this is an air barrier you insert into a skylight or high-performance fan to block air movement and provide additional insulation. It actually really makes a lot of sense.
Jim was kind enough to send me one of the AirLights to try out in my own trailer. I do a lot of camping all year round so I took it to a training class I was teaching and gave it a test.
I have a skylight right over the bed in our trailer and, when it’s cold, you can really feel the chill coming through that thin plastic piece.
Fitting the AirSkirt couldn’t be easier, you basically just inflate it properly and shove it into the opening to form a tight seal. Simple.
In the case of my own skylight, there’s a metal crank handle on it that I had to remove which is a simple affair - I simply unscrewed it and put it into my RV toolbox so I’d find it as the weather gets nicer when I want to open the skylight again.
When I first saw these products on AirSkirts’ website I envisioned something like a very small pool floatie and that image didn’t correlate with the pricing of the AirLight. But once I got it I can see why it’s not an inexpensive pool floatie.
Instead the company has really done an exceptional job with the valves of this device with an attachable Schrader valve that you can hook to your air compressor to inflate it. Inside the top and bottom have strings and substantial reinforcements and the plastic used for the outside is very thick and substantial.
While I live in a relatively mild climate I think think it’s cold but this would be an especially useful gadget if you lived where it got really cold or really hot. I could tell the difference with the AirLight in place.
One of the alternatives to the Airlight is shoving a pillow into the skylight or shoving some insulation into the hole. Of course both of these also are viable options but you have to figure out what to do with the insulation when you’re not using it - the AirLight simply deflates and packs away small.
At the present time several sizes of these are available for different skylight sizes.
My criteria for these gadgets is two-fold, would I have bought one in the first place and would I be pleased with the purchase?
The answer to the first case is yes, I would buy one to insulate the skylight. Would I have been happy with the purchase? Absolutely. I like when things are of even higher quality than you anticipate which this absolutely is.
