Beam me up Solatube!

We have an old house from near the 17th century and reading about how houses like this were built and laid out is very interesting. They were generally narrow with just two rooms and a central fireplace which served both rooms. They were often a certain width and length which was fairly standard and if you read about it in this well documented Dartford archive you can learn quite a bit. Our house is like this, narrow, very long and sandwiched between two neighbors. This makes for a very dark house.
Our biggest problem has always been lack of light here. We've already torn down some walls, installed glass paned doors in the front and back (and soon will replace a back window with a glass door), but we're still pretty much in the dark when we're in the middle of the house.

Last week Seb installed our Solatube in the central part of the house (in the dining room/kitchen) and boy let me just say, "and then there was light!" What holy, celestial light from above brought three floors down! We were really surprised that it could be so effective from so far away. That sucker is beamin down the equivelent of a 300 watt light collected from two stories up!

We will definitely put one of these in the next floor's bathroom as soon as we can work it into the budget. How cool is it to be able to finally see?