Personal Fresh Air Desk | Hacker News Reader

Personal Fresh Air Desk

julioradesca.com

237 pointsrizumu67 comments

Love the idea, might try it at home. But speaking as someone who has run both hydroponic and aeroponic systems successfully (as a hobby) - I'm envisioning a lot of dead plants in 6-12 months time and a maintenance nightmare.

Various issues:

Cleaning - Algae and diseases can quickly kill every connected plant in a hydroponic system. You also need to know how to heal a plant in this situation. Probably the easiest option is just to ditch every plant in the desk, clean, then start again.

Nutrient level maintenance - you now need an employee whose job it is to ensure correct nutrient balance, it's trickier than just adding water!

General part maintenance - more tricky with aeroponics than hydroponics, but various parts of the system quickly get clogged and caulked up (pumps, nozzles, etc). I was replacing a nozzle every 4 weeks on a relatively small 12 nozzle spraying system.

"As a hobby"... are we talking about a certain plant in particular?

Most likely tomatoes.

Yep, tomatoes, cucumber, lettuce, chillies, etc... No weed I'm afraid!

Would succulents be easier to maintain?

I don't really know about the nutrient balance without looking it up, but it's always trickier with multiple different types of plant in a single system. If you have a single plant system, you can just replace the nutrient solution every other week, like for like. If you have different types of plant growing together, you need to be a bit more careful with monitoring your NPK levels.

Then there's the basic maintenance that you'd have to do, regardless of plant type. Like rinsing the nutrient residue from the substrate every couple of weeks to prevent toxic buildup. Not particularly difficult, just drain the solution, pour water over the substrate to rinse, then add new solution.

But it's a new office maintenance task that would have to be done, and I can imagine things getting forgotten/skipped. If you like the idea of taking care of your own desk, then it's not particularly difficult. I'd be more worried in a medium office filled with these though; a small office is easy to take care of a desk or two, and a large office can afford to have a dedicated maintenance job, but a medium office is likely to be stuck with an awkward workload.

It wouldn't take much to design a two part tray that would me the maintenance much easier.

Thanks for the great response!

If you're looking for some plants for your own home/office that are capable of removing toxins from the air, here's a good list, originally compiled by NASA: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_air-filtering_plants

Does anyone know what is special about the pollutants addressed by these plants? Are there other pollutants that are helpful to filter, and why did NASA focus on this set?

The NASA article has some insight on that: http://www.earthcouncil.net/freshair.htm

Not entirely sure, but a lot of these VOCs come from stuff in your house (carpet, paint, plastics).

When I lived in Augusta, GA the air around the city would occasionally reek due to a nearby paper mill. The smell would blow over the city after an hour, but anything that slipped into drafty homes would remain for hours; I'd only notice after returning from walking the dogs.

I started to wonder what I was breathing and found a list of possibile offenders: formaldehyde, acetaldehyde, benzene, chloroform, tetrachloroethylene, and trichloroethylene [1]

I was hoping my plants would help (the link nate_meurer posted casts some doubt).

[1] http://www.sonomatech.com/project.cfm?uprojectid=1103

Those early experiments claiming that plants can clean indoor air had significant methodological problems, and the results have not been reproducible in realistic building environments:

http://www.buildingecology.com/articles/critical-review-how-...

The fact that NASA's name is associated with this study has led it to be widely accepted uncritically.

I believe the paper they're responding to is this one: http://www.greenenergyhelps.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/W...

We have something similar in the Google Norway office: http://www.tu.no/incoming/2012/03/30/1200003568.jpg/alternat... (from http://www.tu.no/bygg/2012/03/31/se-googles-toffe-oslo-konto...)

The desks are made by http://www.biooffice.no

Mirrored on imgur: http://i.imgur.com/i5YQLIN.jpg

The site was giving me database timeout errors so as more people wake up and hit the link, it'll surely crash.

For those who miss it, the post links to this good TED talk on "How to grow fresh air:

http://www.ted.com/talks/kamal_meattle_on_how_to_grow_your_o...

I think it's a great idea. "reducing noise" is taking it a little far though. They need to target this at Western companies with locations in popular and polluted areas (Shanghai, Beijing, Gurgaon, ...)

I've done a little bit of hydroponic growing (chillies) so I'd love to know how the perlite is going to remain algae free and how this desk would be cleaned if / when aglae starts to take hold.

I think this is a great idea though. I, for one, would use it.

Yeah, I was wondering how you drain/clean the desk from time to time. Could get very stinky and gross.

However, I LOVE the idea of working in a mini forest.

You need to use covers, and thick enough containers, to deprive the algae of light to inhibit growth. The perlite, which is a non-renewable resource, does not matter.

Um, guys, the emperor's new clothes are lovely and all, but I am left wondering whether the advantages of this system outweigh, you know, pot plants?

I could imagine a few advantages:

1) Watering. The design appears to only have one water feed tube, which waters all the plants.

2) Weight. Pots are heavy. Making the pots part of the desk should be good for reducing that.

3) Stability. With the pots built into the desk I see it much less likely that a coworker or cat will knock over the plants.

4) Setup. With the design including specific recommendations for plants and needing no other parts I could see the both plants and desk being shipped together.

5) Aesthetics. A white surface with plants growing out of it looks very modern and may complement interior design choices better than a stack of pots even on the same surface.

A decent compromise might be to build space for (plastic?) pots into the desk, so you still have your plants right there (with the stability benefits, etc) without the maintenance bother of hydroponics.

Until I read the reply below, I was thinking "I guess you could grow weed in your desk but it seems a little risky depending on where you work..."

Probably not much, but what's wrong with the emperor just wanting some cool looking new clothes?

Well for one thing pot plants have a pretty strong odor, and for another thing if you have too many the cops will totally arrest you. :-)

It'd make lunch pretty fun, though

ha, do you more often call them potted plants in the US? In England pot plants is common usage!

or opening a window? pretty sure there are a lot of plants doing this outside?

Opening a window is counter-productive if it's smoggy outside, even if you're okay with dealing with the current temperature out there.

This is pretty cool.

I think in a more normal office than used in the pictures (i.e. less light lower ceilings), it would feel like you were in a jungle. Maybe if you add humidity and increase the temperature, it will appeal to our jungle dwelling roots...

Although this is kind of impractical, I wonder if it would work well against the main evil of the modern open office - excess noise. The random angles of the leaves might reduce it a bit...

Not impractical at all. Back in the day when I still worked in a cubicle dungeon I brought a bunch of pot plants in to work to live on my desk. Whether they were able to contribute much to cleaning the air (and the air system in that building was utterly atrocious!) I couldn't honestly say. But they certainly helped me by introducing a more garden-like and less dungeon-like feel to my work area. It didn't take long before the company that serviced the office plants also took to watering and cleaning my pot plants, thus relieving me of much of the maintenance (not that it was a burden - I love working with plants.)

I was going to make a wiseacre remark about how my work frowned on bringing pot plants to work, but I know what you mean :). I work out of my home office now and love being surrounded by plants.

One place I worked at a few years ago, a guy did this. The problem was that it ended up introducing fruit flies to the environment, which was pretty miserable to work around.

I was half expecting the story of how his desk got flipped, turned upside down, but this is actually pretty cool.

I think I'd want to see one in action for a bit before I got my laptop near sources of dirt and water, though.

There is no dirt. Hydroponic means just water and a medium without nutrients (small white perlite rocks in this case).

I already use my laptop in the presence of water, coffee, and food. I doubt there is much risk in this.

Looking around my office right now and I'm pretty bummed to say we have no plants in here.. Its probably time to fix that.

> There is no dirt.

Where there's organic stuff, there's dirt - maybe not right away, but over time.

> I already use my laptop in the presence of water, coffee, and food.

I don't - I'm too paranoid!

I'd like to see this done with some kind of climbing ivy or moss and trellises since the air scrubbing ability does not interest me much at all, and the loss of working space/increased footprint seems non-negligible.

EDIT: After searching around for a while, I discovered a few promising leads to make this happen. The first option is more of a wall mounted solution, but could be repurposed for separating a workspace: http://www.dirtt.net/public/products/breathe_2013.php It is also apparently very easy to train Ivy to climb up wires, assuming you have a lot of natural light, it seems like it would be possible to replicate something like this indoors: http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/look-modern-ivy-8702

I think it makes for a bad desk. Looks bad design-wise, plants block all the light on the working area and it feels cramped.

I love the idea though, might be better suited for living spaces in the form of coffee tables or "plant shelves" than for working spaces where the main desirable conditions are space, light and cleanness.

"cramped" solidifies the objection I couldn't quite put my finger on. I think it would work if the whole thing were significantly bigger, so you have room to spread out and the plants don't feel like they're going to poke you in the eye.

Umm... what plants convert CO2 -> O2 at night as claimed here? Photosynthesis = 6CO2 + 6H2O + Energy -> C6H12O6 + 6O2 ... so unless you leave the lights (Energy) on at night, it's not happening...

I remember from intro bio that there is a category of plants (ones using the CAM metabolism pathway) that close their stomata (openings in the leaves) during the day to save water. So all the oxygen release and CO2 intake occurs at night, and photosynthesis still occurs during the day.

I'm guessing that the plants noted in this article are in that or a similar category; Wikipedia/Googling would provide a lot more info. Cheers!

Bromeliads and many succulents absorb CO2 and release O2 at night using CAM photosynthesis. They're tricky plants, opening their pores only at night to prevent water loss. The actual conversion is done during the day (in the light) using a sort of batch-mode conversion.

I suggest caution when surmising what millions of years of evolution can't do : )

Damn - great to learn, thanks! Though my point still stands, even with the CAM cycle, CO2 is converted to O2 during the day, they CAM plants just absorb CO2 at night... also it seems the CAM cycle produces much less O2 (obviously absorbing much less CO2 in the process) than other photosynthesis cycles...

I'd like to see a photo of it when you've got a computer and a decent sized keyboard, monitor, etc.

Because it looks like you've lost about 2/3 of your desk space there.

Just make the desk bigger and replace cubicle walls with these plants.

Regarding the high-oxygen plants, I wanted to get these after watching the TED talk about them. However I found they were rather obscure and couldn't find them at nurseries.

Pretty much every Home Depot and Lowes has tons of them, at least here in Michigan.

I bought Areca Palms from Home Depot.

http://i.imgur.com/qey9ikr.jpg My previous company office. Don't know what kind of plants they were though. But the owners were health freaks, and I must admit it soothed the environment.

(Sidenote: studio lights were a big migraine/tension headache trigger for me though :( )

Anybody knows if adding O2 into the air, and removing CO2, at the amounts done by plants, is really beneficial for humans? I can see removing formaldehyde is good, but shouldn't there be major amounts of CO2 and serious O2 deficits (like at >2000m sea level) before there is any effect? And can plants cause this effect?

A lot of plants in an area, room for example, can give the area a fresh or clean feeling. That small change can be enough to see a benefit to you as it's just a more pleasant place to be.

That alone can be a beneficial effect.

I personally solve this problem by purchasing cans of fresh air and keeping them in a drawer. A guy I knew once tried to corner the market with a giant vacuum, but failed when the expensive equipment suffered a terrorist attack, putting hundreds of operators out of work and torching my life savings.

My day job is at a gardening company and we're in the process of remodeling our offices. So, do these desks actually exist for sale yet? No way we'd be able to outfit the entire office, but it could make for a cool couple of showpieces for when we have investors and suppliers dropping by.

I have a rather large spot on my desk I could use to put some plants on. Can anyone recommend a starting kit of sorts for a man who has no gardening skills whatsoever? Can someone help take the guesswork out of this for tools like me? :)

I was expecting to see a "portable outdoor desk" you can place in the middle of a park. It would have a wind/water proof hood/umbrella, and a portable accumulator...

Anyway I like this product a lot, great idea.

We recently started working with a client in the fashion industry. One look at our studio and she had nothing positive to say. Apparently it's very drab, and it is. We're a bootstrapped startup and I sometimes think you can track the success of a startup by how many toys they have in their workspace. We have none. I'd much prefer plants over toys though. I just worry about the bugs.

Just wondering what happens when a person is working after sunset - the plants would generate carbon dioxide then :)

That would not be healthy.

Does it come in a standing desk version ?

I think it is pretty cool, however I think just having the plants start at desk-height is not as good as having them start near the floor - seems too artificial.

Maybe a desk that has a drawer or CPU stand or cable organizer, with the plants growing from the base of the desk.

Heh, not really compatible with my modus operandi: I mainly hack at night with lights turned off. And then the plants would compete over oxygen with me :)

There are also 6 plants on the desk who convert CO2 to O2 in night. Read please.

Neat idea! If I had a desk like this I'd prefer the metal frame to be more minimal and less hospital-like (maybe change the color from blue to grey).

Some major annoyances (to me):

- allergy

- bugs

- evenings full of CO2 ---> fainting or dying

Yeah, thanks for the downvote. And sorry for being allergic to 3 families of plants.

The plants are not going to make a material difference in the oxygen content of the room. They are not going to make you high during the day and they are not going to make you faint at night.

I used to relax on a couch near a ficus benjamin, only to faint every single time until I managed to remember what they taught me at school at age 6.

I don't know... YMMV?

Where is it sold?

where to buy those desks?

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