What is a Window Farm??

February 19th, 2011, 2:12 am

We have talked and heard so much about the window farm in the past few days but still there are some of us who are unaware of what it actually is.

Window Farm

In simple term window farm is an indoor garden built with recycled products. We use hydroponics system to grow plants in recycled plastic bottles. There are some special materials that are required to grow plants using the hydroponics system like water based nutrients and rock wool (substitute for soil), we don’t use soil in hydroponics.

Below are some of the designs we came up with for the window farm.

Fig. 1

Fig.1 Have four columns and rows of plastic bottles and build a reservoir below the bottles at the level of the window.

Fig. 2

Fig.2 2 columns and 4 rows of plastic bottles and use the bottles in fourth row as reservoirs.

Fig.3 Use the current design with 3 columns and rows with two pipes one at top and one at bottom as reservoirs.

We are still working on more ideas and plans to come up with the most feasible design.

Tweet

Long talks with Stephen Surlin!!

February 11th, 2011, 2:18 pm

Stephen was a great help to us in getting our research started for the project. We discussed with him what problems their group had faced when setting up the window farm. He told us a few things which they didn’t take into consideration and why their project didn’t work that well. One of the key things that came up in our discussion was plants. Previous group paid more attention in making the whole setup for the hydroponics but didn’t focus on growing any plants in them.

Dried plant in the window farm

Our aim this semester is to grow plants in our window farm by the end of the semester we can probably be able to grow our very own vegetables, herbs, fruits or even some flowers.

Growing plants in the Window Farm

Image source

In the next blog we’ll discuss more about our design and plan for our window farm.

Tweet

EcoHouse Group: Putting the ‘Eco’ in ‘EcoHouse’

January 24th, 2010, 3:06 pm

The EcoHouse Group, which consists of: Stephen (Bachelor of Fine Arts), Jason (Mechanical Engineering), Vincent (Mechanical Engineering) and Gabriel

(Mechanical Engineering), will be working on one of Green Corridors long term projects  called “EcoHouse.”

“A demonstration project that examines and illustrates environmentally-responsible living. An existing house is being converted so that it utilizes innovative solutions for energy efficiency and environmentally-sustainable living.”     -Green Corridor

One of our most promising projects for the house is the Window Farm initiative, a project that creates “suspended, hydroponic, modular, low-energy, high-yield light-augmented window farms using low-impact or recycled local materials.”     -Windowfarms.org

These planters were designed by Rebecca Bray and Britta Riley, an artist collective that have “set out to start a window farm craze in NYC. Britta and Rebecca will work with agricultural, architectural and other specialists to create high-profile prototype window farms and means for sharing design ideas to meet varying local situations around the city.”

Here’s a video on this exciting new project.

Window Farm Project

Tweet