Canopy/Water Collection

Over the past cou­ple of weeks Kim Coop­er and I have been cre­at­ing a canopy that can also func­tion to col­lect rain water.  We ini­tial­ly met and looked over the site to see how we could take advan­tage of the nat­ur­al slope and the dif­fer­ent posts and poles already present.

We sketched out some ideas on how to use some of the remain­ing vinyl mate­r­i­al from Eric Deis’s pho­to mur­al “Last Chance” to cap­ture and fun­nel the water.

We want­ed to use the large cedar tree but have it appear under­neath so peo­ple have to walk under the canopy to see the image.  Only hints of the B/W image would appear on the top as an enticement.

To mark out a pat­tern and take mea­sure­ments we used jute and stones.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Once we had a pat­tern in place, we went on a search for used rope at the docks by Granville Island. This took some seri­ous dig­ging through wood­en box­es filled with worn and frayed rope.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Kim laid out the pat­tern and we met to fold, mark and cut out the vinyl. It turned out that we could­n’t unfold the vinyl in my stu­dio, it was just too small. Instead, we took it across the street and unfold­ed it in the park­ing lot of a local business.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hav­ing cut out and marked the pat­tern, we rent­ed an indus­tri­al sewing machine to stitch the mul­ti­ple lay­ers and flaps into place. The vinyl was so large, heavy and cum­ber­some that we start­ed to refer to it as “The Beast.” It took two of us to lift it and feed it into the sewing machine.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Even­tu­al­ly the beast was ready to take to the Lab. We decid­ed it would be eas­i­er to put the grom­mets in on-site. Using some of our scav­enged rope we hoist­ed the canopy into posi­tion so we could work on get­ting the cor­rect tension.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Once it was taught, we slid in air­line cable and clamped it into place. We then weaved in the ropes through the grom­mets in the cen­tre of the canopy. The ropes will act as a con­duit for the rain water to trav­el into the bar­rel below.

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 4th, 2011 at 4:34 pm. It is filed under Blog and tagged with canopy, Eric Deis, Grow, Holly Schmidt, Kim Cooper, Last Chance, Other Sights, South East False Creek, Vancouver, Vancouver Design Nerds, water collection. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.