Re: sun shine refector ideas needed

ilaboo wrote:
my apartment faces a western wall around 10:30 am to 1 pm sun shimes on this wall--new york city--i would like to reflect this sun light into my apartment--for my plants in my windows that face west.

what i came up with is to place a spherical mirrotr ( planning to make one out of styfoam a nd cover it with a aluminized mylar membrane--space planket--thinkling of a sphere 1 foot in diameter--the western wall is a bout 15 feet from my windows--

what are your thaughts on this problem?--do you thinke it would work?--the sphere will be on a ball joint and i undrstand as the days pass i will have to change th positition of the sphere ( I think)

tia
peter
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There's no reason you couldn't make this work. You'd be much better off with a more durable flat mirror, though--the first storm will make confetti of your styrofoam/mylar device, and it won't last long in the sun either.

The angular size of the Sun is about 0.5 degrees, or 1/100 of a radian, so the light doesn't spread out much after reflecting. That means you'd be much better off with a flat mirror, which has the advantage of being much easier to make. You don't want to be focusing sunlight on your plants anyway.

I'd be inclined to start with a *** of 3/8 inch exterior plywood with some mirror tiles stuck to it, and see how that works. That's a cheap way of getting started, and you can work up to a more complicated tilting thing if you really need it. Make sure that the tiles are on securely enough, because otherwise they're liable to blow loose and rain shards of glass down into the street.

Cheers,

Phil Hobbs
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