Building Sustainable Eco-villages – One Community Weekly Progress Update #453

This week the core team followed up with DomeGaia regarding continued issues for collapsing aircrete. We started Frank on a new task, namely making the solar tutorial more user friendly, began conversations with experts to understand which stabilized earth mixes the Compression Team should test, and how to make sure appropriate clay is purchased. We also added an introduction to the Walipini, Aquapini, and Zenapini design writeup, and created an outline.  

Dean Scholz (Architectural Designer) continued helping with the Earthbag Village (Pod 1) 4-dome cluster designs. This was week #230 of Dean’s work and the focus was more lighting testing and adjustments. This last week three hours were spent working on how to show the light coming trhough the different colors of the bottle wall.

Jose Luis Flores (Mechanical Engineer) completed his 71st week helping finish the Net-zero Bathroom component of the Earthbag Village. This week Jose Luis added a wooden platform made from a 2 by 8 to the net-zero bathroom pump rendering. The purpose of the platform was to elevate the pump and make the swapping of the pump easier by having the platform removable to leave a gap between the pump and the floor. After completing this task, he began rendering images of the pump installation process. The illustrations consisted of the step-by-step process and proper installation of accessories such as a digital pump control and a pressure gauge. These accessories will allow for monitoring and automatic control of the pump system. Next, the images will be added to the net-zero bathroom instructions/tutorial, along with descriptions and recommendations. The pictures below show some of this work.

Daniela Andrea Parada (Civil Engineering Student) completed her 22nd week helping with the Sustainable Roadways, Walkways, and Landscaping tutorial development, mainly focused now on the Earthbag Village components. This week Daniela started off by reading through and going over all new comments left of the documents she had been working on, along with comments that were left on some DropBox files. Daniela incorporated new edits to the Earthbag Village Drainage Plan AutoCAD based on the comments Jae had mentioned and created new PDFs for the changes and wrote a small summary on the Earthbag Village pavement types for the Water Catchment Report. As more comments came in for the Drainage plan, Daniela continued to make changes to the CAD. Once completed, Daniela tried multiple ways to export new PDFs onto different sized paper that would provide the best formatting. In addition, Daniela responded to various comments on the Aquapini and Walipini report and wrote new material for two sections, one of which required some research to confirm that the correct information was being provided. Pictures below are related to 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 18th week helping with the Aircrete and earthbag compression testing. This week the Compression Testing Team made aircrete using recommended measurements provided by DomeGaia: 9.4 lbs cement, 0.7 gallons water, and foam to reach 4.5 gallons of overall aircrete. In addition to this mix, the team created another set of aircrete using extra cement. Both batches of aircrete did not hold up and shrinkage was again observed. Then the team worked on creating a document showcasing all of the compression tests done from June to the present day. Pictures below are related to this work.

Becky Xin (Volunteer Web Editor) completed her 4th week helping with web design, now focused on the Sustainable Roadways, Walkways, and Landscaping tutorial. This week Becky started developing the staging version. This tutorial has 150 pages and a lot of headings and a huge table of contents. She met with Jae, which helped as he went over more efficient ways of formatting than what was used before. Becky will continue to build this page into the coming weeks. Pictures below are related to this work.

Karla Ulloa (Front end Developer) also joined the team and completed her 1st week working on the open source Dome-Home Site Clearing, Preparation, and Maintenance staging page. This week Karla did on-boarding on Wednesday and previewed and reviewed the google docs for this page that was assigned to her. On Thursday she took the first steps to establishing the page by mimicking the layout that was requested. After properly placing the layout Karla began to add the desired functions, fonts and style. Friday was a continuation of applying all desired criteria to the page. See below for pictures related to this work.

Venus Abdollahi (Architectural Designer) completed her 19th week helping finish the Duplicable City Center designs. This week, Venus made some changes to the roofs according to the latest update of the roof plans and her supervisor’s suggestions, had a zoom meeting with her supervisor about these roofs, and added the new roofs to the previous Revit file. See pictures below.

Xuanji Tang (Architectural Designer) completed her 13th week working on Duplicable City Center architectural review and updates related to the structural code. This week she worked on updating the layout of storage shelves in the basement, the furniture in the Social Dome first floor, and the fountain in the swimming pool. Xuanji also cleaned up the walls and columns to export the floor plan pdf for review by the Core Team. Pictures below are related to this work.

Huiya Yang (Volunteer Architectural Designer) completed her 10th week working on the Duplicable City Center architectural review and updates related to the structural code. This week Huiya finished the SketchUp Model for the first-floor living dome, which included building up the walls according to the latest CAD drawings and placing the new rescaled doors. However, after placing the second floor CAD drawings into the SU Model, Huiya found that many places on the first floor and the second floor did not match up. So she set up a meeting with Xuanji and Yuxi, and they decided to modify the CAD drawings first, and then continue modeling after each floor was aligned correctly. Pictures of some of this work are below.

Yuxi Lu (Architectural Designer) also completed her 8th week working on the Duplicable City Center architectural review and updates related to the structural code. This week Yuxi continued to work on the SketchUp model to correct door sizes and add specialized door modeling. She remodeled the kitchen serving bar table in the Dining Dome according to the updated CAD file, as well as other kitchen appliances. Later in the meeting with the rest of the team, Yuxi discovered a few issues with placement of columns and walls through 3D modeling, thus requiring updates to the CAD file to deliver a more accurate plan. Pictures of some of this work are below.

Min Jung Koo (Industrial Designer) completed her 3rd week working on the Duplicable City Center dormer assembly instructions. This week Min Jung began to build the basic beam structure in Rhino. It took some time due to the complex structure. She started on building the garble dormer on top of the beam structure on the CAD for the second floor. Min Jung continued with research on the most commonly used materials and structure of the garble dormer along with the windows. The pictures below relate to all of this.

This week the core team began a comprehensive review and final edits on our Sheep research, consolidating some paragraphs for further clarity, addressing grammar and sentence structure issues, researching lamb and ewe costs, and  discussion on overall approach to bringing everything together for web publication. Check out the pictures below related to this work.   

Qiuheng Xu (Landscape Designer) completed her 60th week volunteering, now helping with the Aquapini & Walipini external landscaping details. This week Qiuheng finished updating the Aquapini and Walipini Design in AutoCAD and adding the notes for each element. She labeled the plant names and created multiple tabs, including the one with notes, a clean design version, and planting design only for team use. After completing the CAD drawing, she uploaded everything and shared them with the team. Pictures below are related to this.

Frank Roland Vilcapaza Diaz (Mechanical Engineer) completed his 21st week helping with the Aquapini & Walipini and Tropical Atrium climate battery designs. This week Frank worked on the summary document related to the Aquapini and Walipini HVAC designs. The methods of infiltration that are used on the Tropical Atrium were used to determine the infiltration energy calculations of the Aquapini and Walipini designs. He was also introduced to the System Advisor Model Program to help with solar design. The pictures below relate to this.

And Brian Storz (Culinary Project Manager) completed his 10th 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 developing the transitional kitchen menu design layout to ensure that the waste was minimal and so that the kitchen crew could perform all the duties necessary to cook for the volunteers every day and every meal. Brian also interviewed and brought on a new volunteer. Below are some images related to this.

Jennifer Lee (Graphic Designer) also joined the team and completed her 1st week working on the open source Permaculture Design staging page. This week Jennifer worked on populating the first pages of the Open Source Permaculture webpage. She worked on the table of contents, images, general body of text, fixed header formatting, and added anchor links to the new additions. See below for pictures related to this work.

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