Solar bottles of light

From boingboing this morning

“The slums of the Philippians are getting an extreme home makeover in the form of two liter bottles in their ceilings. The bottles function as 60-watt lights powered by 100% solar energy. Refraction is an amazing thing, if you drilled a hole in your ceiling light would drop directly through the opening in a straight line casting a shadow on the ground in the shape of the hole. By placing a bottle filled with water into the hole, the light is refracted by the water and emitted at 360 degrees like a light bulb. Light bulbs are taken for granted in America, yet are luxury item for the Philippians slums. The two liter bottles filled with water and a small amount of bleach to keep algae from growing, act as a light in the often-unlit slums.…”

https://community.greencupboards.com/2011/07/14/2-liter-bottles-of-light/

About Lloyd Kahn

Lloyd Kahn started building his own home in the early '60s and went on to publish books showing homeowners how they could build their own homes with their own hands. He got his start in publishing by working as the shelter editor of the Whole Earth Catalog with Stewart Brand in the late '60s. He has since authored six highly-graphic books on homemade building, all of which are interrelated. The books, "The Shelter Library Of Building Books," include Shelter, Shelter II (1978), Home Work (2004), Builders of the Pacific Coast (2008), Tiny Homes (2012), and Tiny Homes on the Move (2014). Lloyd operates from Northern California studio built of recycled lumber, set in the midst of a vegetable garden, and hooked into the world via five Mac computers. You can check out videos (one with over 450,000 views) on Lloyd by doing a search on YouTube:

4 Responses to Solar bottles of light

  1. That is exceedingly clever. I'm keeping it in mind for my planned tiny house. If you were to put a dome (or even half a bigger bottle) over the top and bottom of one of these it could even create dead air space and be decently insulated – for a skylight…

  2. Mystic Seaport sells reproductions of a deck prism from the 1841 whaling ship Charles W. Morgan. We have two of the large ones installed in the roof of an outdoor shower and they are very bright! I wonder if the plastic bottle light was inspired by the deck light or an independent discovery.

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