Pure Inspiration

A while back I had a crazy idea.  I was thinking about cleaning up the bottle dump on our property.  Although it poses a bit of a clean-up problem, it really is one of the only remnants of the historic occupation. 

It came to me in a flash.  The idea was to use the broken glass in a column of light.  A series of them would be stunning marking a path through the woods.

So, when I found myself with a little free time, before the concrete was due, I thought I'd give it a shot.  I wanted to give it a heavy, concrete base, so, since the concrete truck was coming anyway, I made a simple box form and installed a 1.25 inch PVC elbow in the middle with a length of pipe sticking out the side and a florescent tube cover vertically up the middle.  I fashioned a 6 inch diameter column of hardware cloth; ready to be stuck into the concrete. I had a 6 inch PVC cap ready as well.

                                           This what it looked like after the concrete was set.

I fed a 50 light string of clear LED Christmas lights through the tube.  I think next time I will put the lights in before the concrete. It was a bit dificult to get the plug to make the turn through the elbow.

  I then set broken glass from the dump in the space between the clear tube and the hardware cloth.  Then capped it with the PVC cap.  It looked like this:

It certainly didn't look like much in the daylight, but at night it ain't bad.  It looks pretty much as I had pictured in my vision.  I don't see much I would change.  One thing, for sure.  I had used 1/2 inch hardware cloth.  Some of the sharp glass does stick through, so next time I'll use 1/4 inch.