| Light Pipes, Light Pipes, Turn on the Magic of... |
| Written by Hank Green | ||
| Monday, 20 November 2006 | ||
While Hybrid solar lighting systems have a great deal of potential with their fiber-optic wiring and IR filtering, they are very expensive. This device, the light pipe, does pretty much the same thing, except with no concentrator or fiber optics. I'm sure it's less efficient in transferring lights, but it's also gotta be really really cheap. The basic system includes a pipe with a highly reflective interior, a light directing cap (which ensures that a maximum amount of light gets pushed into the tube) and a diffuse lens or mirror at the base of the tube, to spread the light within the interior. The people at Solatube seem to have the system down, and have installed light pipes in houses, retailers and factories across America. Spotted at California Green Business
Comments
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written by Celia , January 26, 2007
For anyone who don't know, this little baby is bright. I had one in the bathroom in a previous place I was at, and My plants loved it. When I moved to a new place, one of my plants was so sad it died.
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written by net97surferx , October 30, 2007
My folks' home has a 'regular' skylight in the kitchen. To get to the roof, there is a big cube cutout in the ceiling to the plastic 'dome' on the roof. It's okay but a lot of the light gets 'lost' in the ceiling-to-roof cutout area instead of 'beaming it' right into the kitchen.
In a hallway, they installed a light pipe (this was 20 years ago so I am certain 'focusing' is even better and cheaper now). That nice little 'dome' on the roof, with nothing but a reflective tube down through the ceiling gives a ton more light than the kitchen 'old school' skylight. And has less problems with leaks around the seals over the years. Definitely a passive solar solution worth the cost! | ||
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