[Greenbuilding] neat idea

[RT]

> Are we talking about the video where the guy in Brazil was using waterin  
> plastic bottles to make low cost lights for the old lady's bathroom?

> the bottle its self that is making the seal - not a goop.

I don't know. *I* was commenting on images in the link that Sacie  
provided, one of which was of a somewhat puzzled-looking Third World  
"local" on a rooftop looking at a plastic water bottle sticking out of the  
roof steel, with a mess of caulking extending a good way up the sides of  
the bottle and around the penetration through the steel.

If the bottle is making the seal, then I'd have to wonder why that mess of  
caulking is there ?
Is it just to provide the aesthetic of the typical leaky skylight that one  
sees on so many First World roofs ?

In order for the bottle to make the seal, the hole punched through the  
steel would have hade to have been cut fairly precisely, under-sized by no  
more than about 0.25 inches (in diameter) and then the edges of the hole  
peened-over upwards so that the bottle could be press-fitted from the  
underside, as one would push a rubber drain plug into an old-fashioned  
bathroom fixture.

> I thought it was neat because it took a waste product and made something  
> useful out of it.

IMO, any "neat"-ness that there may have been was in the idea only ... as  
mentioned, an idea that should have been further developed by design  
refinements before foisting it upon the poor subjects in the Real World ,  
before permanently ruining their otherwise perfectly-good sheets of  
roofing steel.

> So it's not the best solution, but it's free

Justifying a poor design with the qualifiers "free" or "lower cost" is, I  
think, one of the reasons for the near-calamitous failure of the North  
American auto industry ... ie a lousy reason to do something.

> and people don't generally start thinking of the best solution until  
> there's an imperfect solution that could use some improvement.

Perhaps, but I'd just call that "lazy, irresponsible design".

Not everything that falls out of a person's noggin is a wondrous jewel for  
all to behold.
Sometimes it's just snot that should have gone into a hankie.

A rigorous design process should involve successive iterations, each the  
result of a critical evaluation, until the design is relatively refined in  
terms of function, utility, (real and $$$) cost, aesthetic etc.

Judging by the images at the link provided by Sacie, the Real World result  
of the implementation of the plastic bottle skylight idea, it's an idea  
that did not proceed beyond the first iteration of the design process.

-- 
=== * ===
Rob Tom
Kanata, Ontario, Canada