Sunpipe by Terry Payne for Monodraught
by on 04.12.05
After you’ve got over the initial where’s-it-coming-from confusion, natural light in a room without windows is a really cool thing. Skylights are no new invention (nor are pipe shafts to bring light in), but because Sunpipe has a reflective surface on the inside, it can go round corners. Even that dark, dingy bathroom landlocked on your ground floor is a candidate for bright sunlight. The pipe intensifies light, which is the diffused by a translucent disk on the ceiling (see extended post). Besides being more pleasant, natural light increases productivity and costs nothing. Monodraught also makes a version combined with their Windcatcher natural ventilation system. Via Eco-Design Handbook ::Monodraught [by KK]
Sunpipe gets all those hard to reach places.
My parents have one of these in our house, and it's wonderful. We've had it for almost 10 years, and there's never been a problem. It brings enough light into the windowless bathroom that we rarely have to turn on the light during the day. So, not only does it increase ambiance, but it saves energy too.
It kills me to know that along every strip mall in America along main US highways, where all the roof are flat, where all the buildings are one story high, nearly all of them are lit inside, in bright daylight, with banks and banks of fluorescent lights... it's enough to make you wonder how the human could have become so stupid, and so brainwashed by the power of the friendly atom and its oh so insidious parent the utilities, to think that's its OK to burn away electricity like that, when a simple little thingy as a skylight, or a sun pipe, can flood daylight into your shop... I know this frame maker, who for decades, has worked in his back room, under artificial light, when an inch above his ceiling shines sunlight... ready to stream in... it should be a crime, punishable by the most awful of torture, to keep buildings this way, and not go all over America selling SunPipes door to door... which is what I do... kinda... as I am always handing out their brochures, and they have been a staple on my website since like forever... here comes the sun, just don't tell Target or Wal-Mart... they might shoot you on sight as some kind of subversive.