I worked on this project with teammates Henry Han, Gregory Paramonau and Chris Peng.
This project took place in Fall 2025, and it was my first real experience with engineering design. The product of this project was a design concept for a rigid pipe faucet attachment, which allows students living at U of T's Chestnut Residence to fill and wash their water bottles more effectively and conveniently.
Many U of T students, including Engineering Science students living at Chestnut, own a water bottle and use it daily. However, the existing amenities of the dorm rooms did not provide a convenient means of washing them on a regular (daily) basis. Cleaning a water bottle was time-consuming due to the limited space in the sink-faucet setup, as shown below. In addition, filling a bottle completely was actually impossible, since it had to be inclined to fit under the faucet. Some students also mentioned and unpleasant taste of the tap water. Thus, the focus of this project was to improve the convenience of bottle cleaning and filling, followed by improving the taste of water.
Dimensions of the sink
Photo of bottle unable to fit under the faucet
Diagram illustrating the filling of a tilted bottle
Below is a sketch of our recommended Rigid Pipe design. Some of the key features include:
A quick-release faucet coupling mechanism, similar to a bicycle seat fastening lever, which allows the system to be set up in ≤ 1 s
A rigid pipe body with diameter ≥ 7 mm to allow sufficient flow rate ≥ 2.7 L/min
A charcoal water filter to improve water odour and taste
Drawing of the Rigid Pipe design, drawn by teammate Greg Paramonau
Physical prototype of rigid pipe attachment
Through research and testing, we were able to create the following measuring matrix and pugh chart.
Measurement matrix for key requirements and evaluation criteria from our design report
Pugh Chart for 4 candidate designs, against key requirements and ECs from our design report
Hence, we were able to make the following key design decisions (the following bullet points are mostly taken from our design report):
A quick-release connection was chosen over a threaded connection. Using the measurement matrix, it was determined that the hose design has a longer setup time. Since the hose uses a threaded connection, and the others use a quick-release lever, the final design should use a quick-release lever.
A rigid pipe was chosen over a fountain. In the Pugh Chart, the fountain design performs better than the rigid piping on counter-space use. Thus it could be concluded that it should be the recommendation. However, the fountain is much more susceptible to water pressure variation, which could result in spillage outside the sink, or insufficient height to fill a water bottle. Since this affects the convenience in two separate aspects, filling and cleanup, this is a more significant issue than storage space.
The rigid pipe was also chosen over a hose. Although the extended hose attachment can accommodate larger bottle sizes, it must always be held to ensure accurate water flow. This means that only one hand is available to clean. Given that all designs can already met the size requirement that was set, we determined this extra range to not be worth the inconvenience.
Handwashing with soap was chosen over UV light disinfection. Although the UV reservoir creates less splashing, given cleaning doesn’t use water, it requires significantly more setup time since the UV needs to be prepped for use. Since the warm-up time is much larger than the rest, it is deemed a bigger inconvenience than slightly more splashing. Additionally, 15.5 cm falls within the bounds of the sink, hence is not an issue. Therefore, the UV design is more inconvenient.
This project was my first experience with engineering design, and introduced me to a number of engineering tools.
This project helped me develop a sense of discipline and diligence by using engineering tools to make my process more credible. I used engineering tools such as the "Challenging Assumptions" diverging tool to overcome cognitive biases and unfounded assumptions. Tools like this allowed me to be more disciplined and diligent by reaching conclusions more systematically and thoroughly, rather than relying purely on my intuition. This experience is discussed in more detail on the "Challenging Assumptions" page. Using a disciplined and diligent approach made me feel more confident in my design work.
This project also made me value teamwork more. At the start of the project, I didn't value teamwork very much. When I saw something that another team member wrote that did not make sense to me, I sometimes would replace it without first bringing it up with my teammates. I felt like things were more time-efficient that way. However, after discussing as a group, we eventually agreed to leave comments in our documents where we had differing perspectives, instead of immediately making changes. Through this process, I noticed that many of the ideas that I would have otherwise deleted were actually relevant and contributed to enriching our work. Thus, I realized the value of considering multiple perspectives in engineering design work.