Patent Application
20050136820
In the construction industry it is common to have a number of vent pipes coming from the inside of a structure such as a house or building to the outside. Some common vents include plumbing vents, gas furnace or other heater vents, gas water heater vents and gas dryer vents. Many of these vents are pipe like structures, some protrude through the wall of the structure while many come through the roof.
One common vent is the vent stack for plumbing. This vent is required for proper operation of the plumbing within the structure. In residential construction this particular vent is often times made from the same PVC or copper pipe used for the structure drain plumbing. This vent is commonly installed through the roof of the structure. A hole is cut in the roof of the house and a pipe section connected to the plumbing is stuck through the hole. Often a commercially available collar or flashing is used to seal the hole from rain. This flashing ties into the structure's roofing, with sections of roofing often overlapping the flashing to prevent leaks and to give the roof a more finished appearance
In the field, it is currently common practice that the actual vent stack is a piece of white PVC pipe or other pipe that is visible from the street. Even in expensive homes it is not unusual to see a piece of unfinished PVC pipe sticking out of the roof. This white pipe shows up and looks very poor against the roof, which is typically finished in either a dark asphalt type shingle or in cedar shakes.
The present invention solves the limitations of the raw section of PVC pipe showing from the exterior of the structure. The current invention provides a product and a method of camouflaging the PVC pipe used for the plumbing vent or of camouflaging other vents through the roof or walls of a structure. A method is provided of matching the roofing or siding material for transfer to an easy to apply covering for the pipe extension. A covering is provided that can be applied to the PVC pipe on site or can be sold with commercially available vent flashings and seals. The covering could be applied to existing vent stacks or it can be placed on the vent pipe prior to installation through the flashing.
In addition to vent stacks the covering could be applied to any structure protruding through the roof or walls of a residence.
The covering includes camouflage markings (14) and (16) that match the surface markings (114,116) of a conventional roof. In this example the small markings would give the appearance of the grains (114) commonly found in asphalt roofing, the lines (16) give the appearance of areas of linear shading (116) often found in roofing. The specific markings are created by a process of scanning a surface to be matched and then saving the results of the scan as a digital image which can then be printed out on an adhesive label or directly the markings can be printed directly to sections of PVC pipe. Any background material could be matched including vinyl siding and cedar shake roofing.
In application, the camouflage label (40) can be created either to match a new material, such as roofing, and can be sold along side this new material, or the camouflage label (40) can be custom created to match an existing material. During the creation process (
Though not shown it would also be possible to print the camouflage image directly to cylindrical sections specifically to be used as the exposed vent stack portion. Further, though a process of taking a digital image is shown to create the print image, the printed image could be created by other processes.
