20100830
potential for DIY Kit supply by NP Structures in the UK
Hi Andy,
I was really pleased to meet with you, Ian and the NP team. We worked through quite a lot of stuff and I understand that it is going to take you some time to digest and start to work with the Sola Roof approach to greenhouse construction. I am confident that you have the competence to put out some good products incorporating the Sola Roof technology. I did not ask for any "commission" in respect to this commercial activity. I have asked that when you use Sola Roof technology and knowhow that you will respect the conditions established under our Creative Commons Public License and help the Sola Roof community to build our Open Source knowledge base by sharing the results of work and developments of Sola Roof methods and, as a commercial user, that you do contribute 1% of related sales to Pay It Forward projects such as DIY Food humanitarian initiative.
I have asked Bill Watts to get in touch since he could provide you some support out of the deep level of knowledge that maxfordham has developed of a period of a few years of collaboration. I will be following up with the interest that a couple key organizations have in Sola Roof, where DIY projects are planned for implementation this autumn. I understand that you are just started on building up your knowledge of Sola Roof and capacity to supply, therefore I do not intend to suggest you should offer to join projects until you feel confident.
Harvey Rayner and Ross Elliott in Canada are two of the strong contributors to our Sola Roof DIY community who share and discuss their projects with the community of over 1000 individuals who participate at our wiki website and community forum (see links in my signature below) and I encourage you to join and benefit from discussion and activities of a global community.
My priority now is the Sola Roof initiative for DIY Food and to encourage "work parties" to participate in the 350.ORG day to celebrate grassroots solutions to global warming on 10/10/10. Ian, I hope that your DIY Sola Roof project can be registered as one of a number of sites that will draw attention to the formal launch of our global DIY Food campaign.
All the best, Richard
On Tue, Aug 31, 2010 at 5:58 AM, Andrew Butler wrote:
Hello Richard
Can I please take this opportunity on behalf of the NP Structures staff to thank you for your visit and inside knowledge into the Sola Roof technology. Although we feel there is still a lot of work to be done before the product can be marketed and sold as a “standard piece of equipment” we gain some valuable knowledge on the system as a whole and learnt how we might be able to utilise the technology in the future.
Our current development plans are, as you know, pretty busy. We are also approaching the time of year where we are traditionally busy working on customer orders. With this in mind so as not to overload our work load we have decided to take a cautious approach to this development. We are currently developing a small scale structure at our premises to be able to do our development work, record facts and figures and try different methods so we can go forward and offer the very best product to our customers. Our aim is to build a 10ft wide x 15ft long internal structure and cover it with a 14ft wide x 20 ft long structure. Already we’ve found that we can’t use our normal structures due to the physical dimensions. So a new framework has had to be developed. We are also not to sure what material size is required, how we will create and protect the reservoir, covering methods and fan mountings (based on fans we can purchase). Therefore with all this in mind we have decided that the best course of action is to develop this small scale structure here which will not only give us some great insights into the technology but will also give us more of an understanding from a physical design point of view for both the commercial and the hobby ranges. We also have to develop a controls system for the commercial structures, which again can be developed from this test structure. But I’m sure you will appreciate the fact that this isn’t going to happen over night and will take time for us to not only gain confidence in a product we are looking to market but for us to also develop a structure that we can put our name to.
Whilst researching fans and dosing equipment we came across a website called www.solarbubblebuild.com whose editor, Harvey Rayner, references your name & technology. We are a little confused and perplexed as to why you never mentioned this project. Again for us to gain the confidence in the technology it would have been beneficial for us to have visited a fully functioning working model. Can you possibly give us some more information (e.g. what was the projects purpose, who Harvey Rayner is, what was the results, etc…). It also begs the question as to why this technology hasn’t taken off if so many people have tried it in the past (hopefully by now you can see why, as a business, we need to take a cautious approach).
Just to reiterate the points made in the meeting, we don’t have enough funds in the budget to commit to paying for regular consultation fees. It is our opinion that we can actually take this technology to the next step without needing to drag you all the way over to England. We will of course share our knowledge gained and results with you and keep you regularly updated on our progress. We do feel however, that a way we could take this technology forward together is to utilise both parties’ strengths. We have already said we are going to try and develop the technology further and take it onto a commercial scale. However, it seems that you have already done a lot of work in researching the markets and gaining the markets perception of Sola Roof. With this in mind we feel that the best way of going forward together is to work on a commission basis of any orders put forward by the Sola Roof Company.
Hopefully you can see why we must move forward cautiously with this technology and maybe not at the speed you would like. We are committed to giving it our very best attention but it may take some time. If you are ever in the area and would like to come along and view our progress with our test structure then I’m sure we could accommodate this.
Regards