What in the Daylights?

True to our Connecticut Yankee roots, Centerbrook sees itself as a place that marries thrift with ingenuity. Our factory building made drill bits before we converted it to ply our craft, we use water and sun to make electricity, desks are made from recycled solid-core doors; the permutations are many. We also test new building technologies here, with the theory that they’d better work for us before we suggest them to our clients.

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Richard Stebbins and Anthony Chirico of Ameri Energy Group

Our latest experiment is a SunShine Daylighting System that was installed, gratis, by our friends at Ameri Energy Group. It’s a clever unit that looks like a standard skylight but captures and diffuses “natural” daylight more efficiently and evenly and promises energy savings from reduced electricity use. During the day, its skylight, diffusion lens, and reflective panels shed light on the proverbial subject, while at night LEDs add so-called “artificial” light if its needed.

The daylighting system joins many other newfangled materials and products that heat, cool, power, and light our office, which include: flooring made of recycled tires, window film that reduces solar glare, propane-fired high efficiency boilers, and a green roof of sedum. All of it, we hope, demonstrates our commitment to being good stewards of our resources and making ours a humane and productive place to work.