Hey everyone!

In these last weeks we have been searching, ordering, building and fine tuning parts to get our system working as we designed it to be. And here it is! We put a short video on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1G3CJ22gG8&context=C4d3f039ADvjVQa1PpcFNS065J4nWUFHmogFHkh8gP7hRdM0lE5yc=

The principle is completely the same as the ‘conventional’ windowfarm. The pictures below explain where we positioned the parts.

The challenge was to create a matching design in our living room, since it is hard to look around it. It is there! Therefore some of the technical/functional parts had to be redesigned. Next to that we added some features to maintain ease of use. These were:

• Easy to reach herbs / plants when taking care of them or harvesting: To reach the plants we are able to lower the construction by a system with pulleys, exactly like we described in our last post.
• All parts that are in contact with water can be cleaned easily: The reservoir exists of several parts. The bottom part is made of a piece of plastic that were made with a lathe machine. There are two O-rings that seal it to a rainwater pipe that serves as the reservoir. All the connections to the water and air are built into the bottom part.
• The reservoir shouldn’t look too bulky: By using a rainwater pipe (with a diameter of 70 mm) as reservoir it gives a slimming effect. On top of the reservoir we placed a specific part (for connecting water pipes to each other) where we put in a plant. This is also the last plant that gets the water before it drips back into the reservoir. This way it looks like it serves as a vase. A rather big vase, for (at this moment) a pretty small strawberry plant though…

Another difficulty was to get the water all the way to the top. We did not only have a large height to reach ( approx. 3 meters = 10 ft. ), but it also runs in an angle (45 degrees). By tuning the system we did it. The parameters to take into account are:

1. -Length of tube that sucks up the water in the reservoir
2. -Water level that rests on top of the T split.
3. -Amount of air pressure
4. -Thickness of tubes

We added some pictures to get an idea. Enjoy!

Thijs & Nienke

Hello every-one!

Barely three weeks ago we saw Britta’s presentation on TED.com and we were immediately intrigued. We started thinking about a design that would fit our house, which is a little different than most windowfarms we’ve seen so far. The back of our house (orientated towards the south) is made of glass, like a greenery and thus should be used like that!

The highest point (ceiling) will be at 3.10 meters (10 ft), too high for us to reach, so we thought of a pulley system (Katrol in dutch) we can lift it and drag it down.

We are building it right now, looks like everything will work out! We’ll post some new pictures soon!

See you soon!