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Illuminating Window-Less Houses With a Plastic Bottle

Posted by timothy on from the completely-beats-cow-dung dept.

New submitter DancesWithWolves writes "The BBC reports on Alfredo Moser, who came up with a way of illuminating his house during the day without electricity — using nothing more than plastic bottles filled with water and a tiny bit of bleach. In the last two years his idea has spread throughout the world. It is expected to be in one million homes by early next year.'"

7 of 240 comments (clear)

  1. Lighting on ships... by killfixx · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I've seen this type of lighting system before on old ships (USS Constitution, etc...).

    Instead of a water they used glass blocks (or similar).

    But, it's great to see a novel way of recycling trash into something beneficial! :)

    Cheers!

    --
    "Helping to keep you two steps ahead of the Thought Police!"
  2. Simple and zero energy cost by StuartHankins · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Elegant and no energy costs. It recycles something we all have handy. Easy to install also. Hard to argue with all those benefits!

    1. Re:Simple and zero energy cost by ColdWetDog · · Score: 4, Funny

      Something tells me that bottles full of alcohol on a roof would not remain bottles full of alcohol for very long.

      --
      Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
  3. Secure, too... by Urban+Garlic · · Score: 4, Funny

    They're completely unhackable!.

    Soon they'll be mandatory in Enterprise deployments.

    --
    2*3*3*3*3*11*251
  4. Re:aliteroflight.org did it first by Anubis+IV · · Score: 4, Informative

    Moser actually came up with the idea back in 2002 in Brazil. The "last two years" mentioned in the summary is a reference to efforts to spread the idea around the world, of which the site you mentioned is one such example. That site started about two years ago, and if you check the About page, you'll see that they credit him as the originator of the idea and mention that they are working to spread the idea in the Philippines.

  5. So the solution . . . by dmatos · · Score: 4, Insightful

    to illuminating a house with no windows is . . . to add windows? Wow.

    I mean, some kudos are deserved for finding an inexpensive (almost free) way to add windows, and using windows whose shape provides some refractory scattering of the incoming light. Still though, his solution to no windows was literally TO ADD WINDOWS.

    --

    It may look like I'm doing nothing, but I'm actively waiting for my problems to go away.
    --Scott Adams
  6. Re:Glass bottles by lxs · · Score: 5, Funny

    That's what I hate about shanty towns. No food or running water but every shack has a hardwood floor and is filled with antique furniture. This morning there was a guy outside my office begging for a few coins so I told him: "I will buy you some drugs but I won't give you money. You'll only spend it on a Louis XV side table." You have to be tough with these people or they'll never learn.