← Skylight install bid calculator
Roofers and window crews get shopped on a published $800 a skylight installed Facebook special. Those numbers cannot see the unit or the opening. One tubular sun tunnel dropped into an existing chase is a different job from three solar-venting glass units with new cut-ins, tile flashing, drywall light shafts, and a second-story ladder.
Open the free skylight install bid calculatorA skylight is a unit, then an opening, then the roof it sits in. A tubular sun tunnel is a 10–14" tube. Fixed glass is a curb unit with no vent. Solar or electric venting is the remote and a rain sensor. Replace-existing pulls the old unit. New cut-in opens the roof and the ceiling.
The cheap special is almost always one tubular unit, replace-existing, asphalt, no shaft, one story. A solar-venting tile cut-in with three shafts is a different crew day. Matching a per-unit number on that job is how a sold opening becomes a loss when the shaft and the flashing eat the margin.
Window replacement is wall openings and united inches. An asphalt shingle reroof is squares and pitch. Metal roof is standing-seam panels. Solar PV is dollars per watt. A sunroom is glazed walls. A screened porch is mesh. This prices a skylight: unit count, type, scope, roof, and extras.
Load the wage with payroll burden. Add overhead as a share of direct cost. Then take margin as a share of the customer’s price, not a markup on cost. The walk-away number is total cost. A proposed price under that number loses money before you take anything out of it.
This page is a walkthrough of the arithmetic in the skylight install bid calculator. It is not a roofing specification, a flashing design, a building-code determination, or a price you should copy onto a contract.
Charge from unit count, type, scope, roof, and extras — not a published $800 / unit special. One tubular sun tunnel dropped into an existing chase is a different job from three solar-venting glass units with new cut-ins, tile flashing, drywall light shafts, and a second-story ladder.
No. A tubular sun tunnel is a 10–14 inch tube in a chase — that is the cheap special. Fixed glass is a curb unit with no vent. Solar or electric venting adds a remote, a rain sensor, and a heavier curb. Matching a tube number on a venting cut-in is how a sold opening becomes a loss when the shaft and the flashing eat the margin.
Replace-existing pulls the old unit and reuses a sound curb. New cut-in opens the roof and the ceiling and frames the hole. Asphalt takes a standard flashing kit. Tile or metal is specialty flashing. Low-slope is a built curb. Drywall shafts, ice-and-water, laminated glass, shaft paint, and a second story do not live in a published per-unit dump.
No. Window replacement is wall openings and united inches. An asphalt shingle reroof is squares and pitch. Metal roof is standing-seam panels. Solar PV is dollars per watt. A sunroom is glazed walls. This prices a skylight: unit count, type, scope, roof, and extras.