Better Living Through Open Source Sustainability – One Community Weekly Progress Update #463

One Community is creating better living through open source sustainability. We’re doing this by developing free-shared plans for all aspects of sustainable living: food, energy, housing, education, for-profit and non-profit economic design, social architecture, fulfilled living, global stewardship practices, and more.

• Here’s our project overview
• Here’s our world-change methodology
  
• Here’s how this becomes self-replicating
• Here’s how we are open source and free-sharing all the do-it-yourself designs

OUR MAIN OPEN SOURCE HUBS

Click on each icon to be taken to the corresponding Highest Good hub page.

One Community’s physical location will forward this movement as the first of many self-replicating teacher/demonstration communities, villages, and cities to be built around the world. This is the February 6th, 2022 edition (#463) of our weekly progress update detailing our team’s development and accomplishments:

Better Living Through Open Source Sustainability
One Community Progress Update #463

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ONE COMMUNITY WEEKLY UPDATE DETAILS

HIGHEST GOOD HOUSING PROGRESS

One Community is creating better living through open source sustainability through Highest Good housing that is artistic and beautiful, more affordable, more space efficient, lasts longer, DIY buildable, and constructed with healthy and sustainable materials:

• • • Learn about: Our Upcoming Crowdfunding Campaign
    • Learn about the different village models: 7 Sustainable Village Models
    • Visit the open source portals for the first two: Earthbag Village OS Hub | Straw Bale Village OS Hub

This week the core team continued their part of work on the Murphy bed assembly instructions. We had another Murphy Bed call with Stacey and went through comments with her and helped correct differences between new construction electrical boxes and remodel boxes. The same team member also collaborated on details for bringing chickens, rabbits, and sheep onto the property, and how many. Then he performed more edits on chicken coop doc, mainly regarding the wall assembly to be positioned on the floor, lifted into place, and then using concrete anchor bolts to stabilize the wall on the floor and nail it to the roof.

The core team also interpreted results from the compression testing team and updated the assignment file for directions on this week’s expectations. We communicated with the Hub connector team about summaries and the science behind geodesic domes and met with the Hub connector team and discussed issues with bracket overhang when beams come away at an angle from the hub. We watched a video on foam from Aircrete Harry and purchased his foam generator, made edits and addressed comments in the walipini, aquapini, zenapini document.

Dean Scholz (Architectural Designer) continued helping with the Earthbag Village (Pod 1) 4-dome cluster designs. This was week #239 of Dean’s work and he is now working on the actual renders. The pictures below show two new perspectives.

Daniela Andrea Parada (Civil Engineering Student) completed her 31st week helping with the Sustainable Roadways, Walkways, and Landscaping, Earthbag Village, and the final Aquapini & Walipini website updates. This week Daniela used Autodesk to show what needed to be added on the labeled piping system PDF for Earthbag Village. She added the newest lengths and calculations to the cost analysis excel sheet for this drainage system and added it to the narrative too. Daniela then reviewed a revision Sangam had made, got in touch with Jae and provided which programs on her computer still had activated licenses, and had a meeting with him in order to review new tasks for the following weeks. Daniela also met with Tugce to provide a rundown on the work she completed along with what items needed to be reviewed and started reading through the Roadways, Walkways, Gutters and Parking Lot report, reviewing it and comparing it with the published version. Pictures below are related to this work.

Jose Luis Flores (Mechanical Engineer) completed his 80th week helping finish the Net-zero Bathroom component of the Earthbag Village. This week Jose Luis began researching unistrut channels for the use of the rain barrel support structure. After seeing a few examples on how unistrut channels were used, he compared prices of the parts needed to construct the structure. With the best pricing of parts found, he began to render the support components in SolidWorks. The components were rendered by using the dimensions provided by the manufacturer to increase the accuracy of the renderings. The base, unistrut channel and the spring nut were assembled in SolidWorks to demonstrate the functionality of the unistrut channel. The pictures below show some of this work.

The Compression Team consisting of Dominick Banuelos (Civil Engineering Intern), Jarot Tamba (Civil Engineering Intern), John Paul D. Matining (Civil Engineer Intern), and Marcus Nguyen (Civil Engineering Intern) completed their 20th week helping with the Aircrete and earthbag compression testing. This week the Compression Testing Team spent another week organizing themselves for the semester to prepare for making the actual test cylinders for this project. During this week, the team held several meetings with their fellow team members, their onsite supervisor, and with their managers to figure out the actions needed to move forward with a set plan and procedure for making the aircrete cylinders. The team made a video recording to demonstrate how foam was being produced from the Little Dragon Foam Generator for further inspection of the foam making process. A new foam generator was also purchased to test foam quality. Pictures below are related to this work.

Shreyas Dayanand (Battery Research Engineer) also completed his 20th week helping with the solar microgrid design specifics related to electric vehicles and battery sizing. This week Shreyas worked on the reading and understanding of the cost analysis for the EV v/s ICE automobiles. He added information to the document regarding conclusions, related sources, links, etc. Shreyas also contacted the Golf Cart vendors and obtained costs and addressed comments within the development document. Pictures below are related to this work.

Yuran Qin (Volunteer Web Editor) completed her 11th week helping with web design, this week focused mainly on the Tools and Equipment page. This week Yuran continued working on checking all of the links and adding any that were missing to this page, all following the format that is already there. She also alphabetized the tool section, the equipment section, and the materials section and added anchors and missing descriptions for any that were missing them. Pictures below are related to this work.

DUPLICABLE CITY CENTER PROGRESS

One Community is creating better living through open source sustainability through a Duplicable and Sustainable City Center that is LEED Platinum certified/Sustainable, can feed 200 people at a time, provide laundry for over 300 people, is beautiful, spacious, and saves resources, money, and space:

• • • Learn about this building and it’s function: Duplicable City Center Open Source Hub

This week Luis Manuel Dominguez (Research Engineer) completed his 36th week helping with research related to the City Center Eco-spa designs. This week Luis focused on the detailing for the City Center Spa Design in preparation for publishing it to the website. The report is in its final stages of documentation, meaning that a majority of the contents are prepared, but the details need to be rewritten in a publishable format for the website. Luis worked on modifying portions of the website to accurately reflect the current design specifications. Pictures below are related to this work.

Frank Roland Vilcapaza Diaz (Mechanical Engineer) completed his 31st week helping, now focused on content related to the Solar Microgrid sizing. This week Frank checked over the different energy values for the equipment selected for the City Center. He also read over fans and pipe selection for the emergency HVAC system. Lastly, Frank worked on making a preliminary selection of the pipe extension to calculate the energy use of fans and losses due to friction. The pictures below relate to this.

Venus Abdollahi (Architectural Designer) completed her 28th week helping finish the Duplicable City Center designs. This week, Venus completed the section F_F and G_G. She added walls, columns and furniture, and corrected some parts of the section according to the new floor plans. See pictures below.

Xuanji Tang (Architectural Designer) completed her 20th week working on Duplicable City Center updates, now focused on the City Center Lighting updates. This week she updated the Dialux evo light analysis file following the DDC-lighting master file, measured and listed the diameter of the dormer for each floor in the SketchUp model, and drew a wall section for the domes. Pictures below are related to this work.

Huiya Yang (Volunteer Architectural Designer) completed her 18th week working on the Duplicable City Center architectural review and updates related to the structural code. This week Huiya modeled the first-floor walls, adding the furniture on the first-floor central part, modeling the second-floor slab, modeling the columns, and fixing the doors in the central part. She also noticed that three entrance doors on the first floor all have different sizes, and will check on these with Xuanji next week. Pictures of some of this work are below.

George Koshy (Design Engineer) completed his 16th week working on the Duplicable City Center connectors we’ll use to build the domes. George completed a 3-plate “V” bracket design. The amount of stress in the bracket was observed to be much lesser when compared to a 2-plate bracket design. He also completed the assembly with the 3-bracket design. The stress pattern shows tearing at the bolts holes in the lower bracket. The stress distribution shows that the bracket holds under stress. The bolt patterns have to be looked into to understand the tearing at the bracket ends. The pictures below relate to this work.

Yuxi Lu (Architectural Designer) also completed her 16th week working on the Duplicable City Center architectural review and updates related to the structural code. This week Yuxi met with her team to discuss the guiding element that would determine the outline of exterior walls as the previous SketchUp model has some variation from the existing CAD drawing. This week’s work consisted mostly of verifying first floor furniture items with interior design packages along with floor modeling. As the team updates the SketchUp model, it is essential to keep the old material, especially carpet details, on the newly drawn floor outlines. Also to make sure that the floor is in the exact enclosure within the shell to produce more accurate CAD drawings. Pictures of some of this work are below.

Raj Patel (Mechanical Engineer) completed his 7th week helping with the Duplicable City Center hub connectors design and testing. This week Raj worked on modeling the angled beams to ensure the results obtained on the flat section will carry over. He also worked on brainstorming ideas about how to incorporate the full size ‘V’ connector for when the beams are angled. He then tried to incorporate the lengthwise hub connections to test if the structure would gain any additional strength. Pictures below are related to this work.

Douglas Whittemore (MEP Designer) completed his 2nd week helping with the Aquapini & Walipini HVAC and Solar Microgrid sizing. This week Doug finished reading and informing himself on all the details available on the Solar Energy Setup page. He started research on typical power draws for hotels and resorts. He then performed research on average annual electricity consumption for hotels and resorts that resemble the size of Earthbag Village. Additionally, Douglas reviewed the Energy Demand Earthbag, City Center and Demand Totals tabs on the Energy Balance spreadsheet. The pictures below relate to this work.

Hyun-Young Kim (Mechanical Engineer) completed his 4th week helping with the City Center Eco-spa SolidWorks modeling and testing. This week Hyun-Young Kim calculated the heat loss from the ground while taking into account different sizes. By making it a function of radius r for a hemisphere, he was able to plot out heat loss vs amount of ground. He then fit it into functions that will converge as the radius approaches infinity to extract the approximate heat loss to expect. Combined with the heat loss as a linear function of temperature from previous tests, we should have a solid grasp on heat loss from the hot tub now. The pictures below share some of this developing work.

Prathik Nirmal Jain (Mechanical Engineer) also completed his 3rd week of work on the Duplicable City Center hub connectors design and analysis. This week Prathik researched the weight of the internal support and equipment that would act on the hubs for better designing of the centerpiece of the hub. He also researched the best way to construct the hub that would make the building of the dome easy, also how each hub can strengthen the hub joint. Pictures below show some of this work-in-progress.

HIGHEST GOOD FOOD PROGRESS

One Community is creating better living through open source sustainability through Highest Good food that is more diverse, more nutritious, locally grown and sustainable, and part of our open source botanical garden model to support and share bio-diversity:

• • • Learn about the structures: Hoop House Hub | Aquapini & Walipini Open Source Hub
    • See what we’ll be growing: Gardens & Hoop Houses | Large-scale Structures | Food Forest | TA

This week the core team continued updating the 3D SketchUp model of the Sheep barn. We researched best options for DIY projects for a sheep feeder, lambing pens and mixing area. We then built a feeder according to the DIY plan and set up lambing and mixing pens in SketchUp using cattle panels. The same team member also generated an image fo the herbal garden by the City Center and created and collaborated on the list of plants, herbs, vegetables and berries bushes to be planted there.

And the core team completed another 10% of a total update to our property-wide Permaculture Design plan. Pictures below show some of this behind-the-scenes work and we’d say we are now about 90% done with these updates.

Qiuheng Xu (Landscape Designer) completed her 70th week volunteering, now helping with the Aquapini & Walipini external landscaping details. This week Qiuheng worked on adjusting the Lumion rendering video of the Aquapini and Walipini project. She fixed some floating plants and did a final check of the whole video before she rendered it and shared it with the team. Then she continued to work on labeling in the AutoCAD plan to match Daniela’s file. Pictures below are related to this.

And Brian Storz (Culinary Project Manager) completed his 19th week helping lead the completion of the Transition Food Self-sufficiency Plan, Transition Kitchen designs, Food Procurement and Storage plan, and related menu and meal plans. This week Brian worked on getting all the produce shopping lists for the transitional kitchen’s first two weeks menu. Brian then worked on adding some equipment to the build out budget and making a guide for designing new recipes so that they fall within the updated guideline. Below are some images related to this.

Maya Callahan (Sustainability Researcher) completed her 4th week helping with research and web design, now focused on final review and edits to the DIY Permaculture Design staging page. Starting at Step B of “Step 3 – Develop a Conceptual Design” she read through it, fixing any punctuation, spelling, or grammatical errors that she came across. As she read through she double-checked hyperlinks to ensure they opened in the proper tabs and had the proper hover text, made comments on the Permaculture Page Content and Research Google Document on content that required clarifications or needed to be rephrased, and checked hyperlinks ensuring that none were missing, broken, or opening improperly. Maya also double-checked that outside sources were all backed up as PDFs in the Permaculture Website Resource Backup Dropbox folder. The pictures below are related to this work.

HIGHEST GOOD EDUCATION PROGRESS

One Community is creating better living through open source sustainability through Highest Good education that is for all ages, applicable in any environment, adaptable to individual needs, far exceeds traditional education standards, and more fun for both the teachers and the students. This component of One Community is about 95% complete with only the Open Source School Licensing and Ultimate Classroom construction and assembly details remaining to be finished. We’ll report on the final two elements to be finished as we develop them.

With over 8 years of work invested in the process, the sections below are all complete until we move onto the property and continue the development and open sourcing process with teachers and students – a development process that is built directly into the structure of the education program and everything else we’re creating too:

• Program Overview: Education Open Source Hub
• How the components work together: How to use the Education for Life Program
  
• Lesson Plans for Life – Lesson Plans How-to
• Foundations of Outstanding Leaders, Teachers, and Communicators
• Curriculum for Life
• Teaching Strategies for Life
• Learning Tools and Toys for Life
• Evaluation and Evolution

Highest Good Education: All Subjects | All Learning Levels | Any Age – Click image for the open source hub

HIGHEST GOOD SOCIETY PROGRESS

One Community is creating better living through open source sustainability through a Highest Good society approach to living that is founded on fulfilled living, the study of meeting human needs, Community, and making a difference in the world:

• • • Read the Highest Good society overview: Highest Good Society
    • Learn about the model for fulfilled living and sharing: A Day in the Life
    • Learn about the 4 economic models: RBE | For-profit | Non-profit | Entrepreneurship
    • Learn about our open source community collaboration and management software: The Highest Good Network

This week the core team completed 19 hours managing One Community volunteer-work review not included above, emails, social media accounts, web development, new bug identification and bug fix integration for the Highest Good Network software, and interviewing and getting set up new volunteer team members. Pictures below show some of this.

Aleksandra “Alex” Gorkovenko (Graphic Designer) also completed her 25th week, now working icon images for the Highest Good Network software. Alex spent this week fixing the economic icons, and all of them (except icon number 3) were added to the “Final” folder. She also made changes with all the details that were suggested, and downloaded stewardship icons number one, four, five, seven and six into the “Final” folder. Pictures below are related to this work.

Rachit Joshi (Software Engineer) completed his 5th week helping with the Highest Good Network software. This week Rachit reviewed all the dependabot PRs, and opened a new PR#358 to merge these changes in one go. Once this PR is approved and merged, he will close the PRs created by dependabot so that it remains clean. He also worked on making the existing visualization more robust and changed the date filter so it doesn’t break the visualizations once it’s reset. Rachit then started work on visualizing user tasks in PeopleReport.jsx. The pictures below relate to this work.

Aaron Chan (Software Engineer) also completed his 3rd week helping with the Highest Good Network software. This week, Aaron updated the popup text when a user deletes the badges from the select feature, improved the efficiency of assigning badges as an Admin so that it only requires to fill the first and last name before assigning badges then click to confirm. He also helped with PR review #354 and commented with a few required changes. The pictures below relate to this work.

And, last but not least, Jin Hua (Web Marketer and Graphic Designer) helped us with resolving a flagged campaign from our Adwords campaigns and coming up with a solution to slow-loading pages. See pics below related to this.

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