This week the core team continued what we hope will be the final review of the Murphy bed assembly instructions. We continued to recreate the Murphy bed in SketchUp 3D, assembling it using the latest version of the instructions. This week we focused on assembly of the back storage that includes sets of shelves on different levels with upper shelving drawer units. Pictures below are related to this work.

The core team also added more updates to the power estimations needed for the solar microgrid design. We updated the solar sizing energy demand work as we received feedback from Vicente, reviewed the time matrix for usage and added additional columns, such as Max Demand Per Resident, and also identified high draw items. In addition to this, we led the aircrete team and provided comments on their calculations for stabilized earth. We then started the students on researching aircrete since the aircrete is still collapsing when made in bigger batches than the test cylinders.

Dean Scholz (Architectural Designer) continued helping with the Earthbag Village (Pod 1) 4-dome cluster designs. This was week #227 of Dean’s work and the focus was hours of continued lighting placement and testing. Pictures below show some of this.

Jose Luis Flores (Mechanical Engineer) completed his 59th week helping finish the Net-zero Bathroom component of the Earthbag Village. This week Jose Luis began creating action lists for the Net-zero bathroom plumbing, rendering, and electrical plans. He began by researching the necessary knowledge and structure used to construct the plumbing and electrical plans on AutoCAD. With the research he was able to complete the action lists. He also reviewed the current rendering to see what details were missing and what important component additions were needed for an accurate representation. The pictures below show some of this work.

Jeson Hu (Aerospace Engineer) completed his 26th week helping with research related to the solar microgrid design, sizing, and cost analysis specifics. This week, Jeson addressed the final comments on the two reports and the diesel generator spreadsheet. He also did a final review on them. Then, Jeson adjusted data and formatting of the diesel generator spreadsheet. In addition, he copied the format of the table on One Community’s website and updated most of it. At last, Jeson commented on the One Community website content that he needs to update. The pictures below share some of this work.

Aidan Geissler (Sustainability Researcher) completed his 18th week helping with 2nd-to-final review, feedback, and content editing. Aidan continued to work on translating his research, analysis, and findings for the Insulation Comparison Spreadsheet he developed into written content for the Sustainable Insulation webpage. He also continued to support the Aircrete and Earthbag Compression Testing Team by reviewing their research and testing progress, and double-checking their calculations. Pictures below are related to this work.

Frank Roland Vilcapaza Diaz (Mechanical Engineer) completed his 11th week helping with the Earthbag Village energy specifics. This week Frank worked on the infiltration energy calculation for the Tropical Atrium and the Aquapini and Walpanini designs. He read through the Air Infiltration Calculation Techniques and the HVAC Application Handbook from ASHRAE to better understand the method of calculation. Finally, Frank created plots to visually understand the energy consumption required for each building. The pictures below relate to this.

Shreyas Dayanand (Battery Research Engineer) also completed his 10th week helping with the solar microgrid design specifics related to electric vehicles and battery sizing. This week Shreyas researched the types of EV chargers used and which OEMs use what type of chargers in the USA. He also continued his research on battery storage options for the solar farm. Shreyas additionally started studying previous case studies in the USA from the IRENA source to obtain information on how to proceed further. He also studied case studies for Alaska and Hawaii and consolidated the learnings from the same. 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 9th week helping with the Aircrete and earthbag compression testing. This week, John created a folder called “_Template” which will standardize the filing convention moving forward for the Duplicable City Center project. In addition, a sample electrical sheet which will show power plans has been drafted to be carried over for subsequent sheets (i.e. floors 1 to roof). With that said, an xref for the furniture plan (“FP_00 – OCG21001”) has been created and this format is expected for the remaining floors. They shall be derived from the master plan. Finally, an eTransmit filing standard has been developed for the purpose of downloading and sharing files as an organization standard. Pictures below are related to this work.

Tiffany Gao (Sustainability/Plastics Researcher) completed her 7th week as a researcher, reviewer, and web developer. This week Tiffany discovered Community Eco Power, an organization that actually specializes in “cost effective solutions that divert waste from landfills and increase renewable energy generation” for communities. After reading up on the Pittsfield and Springfield plants, she began conducting research into just how sustainable and effective the methods outlined on the website were. From dry sorbent injections to electrostatic precipitators, she’s been reading and taking down notes – and sees this as a potential collective & effective waste management system. The pictures below share some of this developing work.

This week the core team continued working on the “Earthbag Construction Footers, Foundation, and Flooring” review for finalizing the live page. We addressed past comments and identified additional areas for improvement, covering from section 4.3 to 6. We also separated the flooring section into its own page and started formatting that. The pictures below share some of this work.

Another core team member reviewed and assigned 18 responses to another volunteer engineer to validate and/or correct, covering dome work boundary outer area, utilities, areas of excavation, 3-dome cluster footer, foundation heights, flooring, tamping/compaction, using water to determine grade differences, and centerpoint re-establishment. These covered pages up through page 49.

And the core team continued what we hope will be the final review of the Murphy bed assembly instructions. We completed the assembly of the benches and table with hardware installation. We then started working on assembly of the bed framing, wall framing, side shelving and ceiling with the light cut outs. As we did this we provided comments with suggestions and related images to help with the corrections and updates that were found to be needed. Pictures below are related to this work.

The core team also finished the initial power estimations needed for the solar microgrid design. These included daily values for each area and total, graphs, updating formulas, creating a new tab with a summary of energy needs, including monthly demands and max winter plot. We additionally addressed and organized comments from the aircrete team and double checked and improved the aircrete team’s spreadsheet of calculations.

Stacey Maillet (Graphic Designer) completed her 47th week working on the final edits and revisions to the Murphy bed instructions. Stacey processed some of the comments received on the most recent version of the Murphy bed instructions. She is reading through the notes posted to the shared PDF document and making the changes directly into the instruction Illustrator files. Many of the comments are already improving the look and legibility of the document. Screenshots below are related to this latest progress.

Jose Luis Flores (Mechanical Engineer) completed his 58th week helping finish the Net-zero Bathroom component of the Earthbag Village. This week Jose Luis finished adjusting the flash rendering to align with the roof access frame of the net-zero bathroom. The roof saddle was redimensioned to coincide with the roof access size changes. To complete the flash rendering, he added fasteners to the appropriate locations along the saddle. The following changes were made to reduce material use and simplify the process. This coming week Jose Luis will make an action list on all the steps needed to finalize the plans. The pictures below show some of this work.

Jeson Hu (Aerospace Engineer) completed his 25th week helping with research related to the solar microgrid design, sizing, and cost analysis specifics. This week, Jeson followed up with the diesel generator companies regarding the quotes for 100kw and 150kw generators including email and phone call communications. After receiving the quote or response, he input the product spec and the quotes into the spreadsheet comparison table. Finally, Jeson saved the email communication thread to PDFs and saved them into the dropbox folder along with the diesel generator specs sheets. Lastly, he addressed the comments that Vicente had on the spreadsheet, including calculation and format adjustments. The pictures below share some of this developing work.

Aidan Geissler (Sustainability Researcher) completed his 17th week helping with 2nd-to-final review, feedback, and content editing. This week Aidan continued to provide management and guidance to the Aircrete and earthbag compression testing team. He reviewed their trial testing progress and updates to their plan, helped review their calculations to ensure precision and accuracy, and provided additional comments and suggestions to guide the development of this team’s work. Aiden also returned to the Insulation Comparison spreadsheet that he created a few months ago and began the final research process needed to incorporate it into the website. Pictures below are related to this work.

Frank Roland Vilcapaza Diaz (Mechanical Engineer) completed his 10th week helping with the Earthbag Village energy specifics. This week Frank worked on the energy consumption summaries of the HVAC systems for the Atrium, and the Aquapini and Walipini designs. He also created some plots to examine the monthly average energy consumption of both buildings. The energy consumption of the infiltrations needs further research and will be added in the final report. The pictures below relate to this.

Shreyas Dayanand (Battery Research Engineer) also completed his 9th week helping with the solar microgrid design specifics related to electric vehicles and battery sizing. This week Shreyas continued to work on the techno-economical analysis of EV charging using the HOMER GRID application. He analyzed the level 5 DC Ultra-Fast Charging scenario for an EV with a 100 kWh battery pack and documented the findings of the analysis for the same. Shreyas also worked on drawing conclusions for the analysis that was previously done by plotting graphs for comparison for EV charging times, commercials for charging, and levels of EV charging (i.e. charging rate). 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 8th week helping with the Aircrete and earthbag compression testing. This week they worked to finish the docs and address the comments to begin the final cylinders that will be curing for the next few weeks. They also created excel sheets that will be used to capture the data of each individual cylinder, solidified calculations regarding their stabilized earth and aircrete mixes on their google sheets document, and practiced more mixes and prepping for the upcoming weeks to be as efficient as possible.

Tiffany Gao (Sustainability/Plastics Researcher) completed her 6th week as a researcher, reviewer, and web developer. This week Tiffany focused her efforts on further improving the Plastic Recycling page. After receiving about 4 pages of edit feedback, she added “Titles” to her links, fixed spelling errors to reflect “Title Case”, fixed headings and the table of content bullets, replaced missing/broken images and resized images, fixed spacing errors seen in preview mode, and forced center code on other images. Tiffany finished up by completing a bit more grammar review. The pictures below share some of this work.

This week the core team continued work on the Duplicable City Center Project Specification and Design Basis documentation. The focus this week was Project Specifications Chapter 5 for Architectural and Chapter 9 for Plumbing, 1st Floor Occupancy Calculation – Number of required restroom fixtures per CBC Chapter 29, and the AutoCAD 3D solid model. Pictures below share some of this work-in-progress.

Ian Oliver Malinay (Energy Modeler/Analyst) completed his 31st week helping run the energy analysis calculations to help us achieve LEED Platinum status for the Duplicable City Center. This week Ian continued the development of energy modeling narrative document for LEED Building Certification. He specifically updated the occupancy schedule and included it to narrative document for checking. Ian also processed the thermal zone of the building in DesignBuilder Software, and attended to the team queries particularly the ASHRAE 90.1 needed tables as reference. Please see below related screenshots of activity for reference.

David Na (Project Management Adviser/Engineer) completed his 23rd week helping with input and management of the Parking Lot and Sustainable Roadways, Walkways, and Landscaping tutorial development, as well as the City Center Water Catchment Designs. This week David assigned action items for his team. Due to the the Roadways, Walkways, and Landscaping tutorial being close to completion, he was not able to give Daniela more than 4-5 hours of work (approximate). David met with Carol this week via Zoom to communicate the details of the cost analysis and answer any questions that Carol may have. David also looked through the Roadways doc to address and resolve remaining comments. Pictures below are related to this work.

Carol Nguyen (Civil Engineer) also completed her 17th week helping with the Sustainable Roadways, Walkways, and Landscaping tutorial development. This week, Carol worked on calculating the length and area of the One Community roadways: fire truck access path with bike path and pedestrian path (green lines in CAD), and bike path and pedestrian path only (blue lines in CAD). This was to calculate the roadway costs. Carol also wrote missing introductions for different sections on the report, and researched and wrote the section for cross section layers and functions. Pictures below are related to this work.

Luis Manuel Dominguez (Research Engineer) completed his 17th week helping with research related to the City Center Eco-spa designs. This week Luis returned to the team and began his work on the controls and instrumentation diagrams for the City Center Spa. He was able to catch up on the team’s progress and began constructing a plumbing and instrumentation diagram (P&ID) after reviewing the updates. This also involved locating several softwares that provide the proper symbols and annotations, while being reasonably priced. Luis was able to narrow his search down and select the Lucid Chart software that operates similarly to Google Drive in terms of sharing linked documents and allowing the team to make comments to the file. Below is the first draft of the P&ID and there will be significant detail added later. Pictures below are related to this work.

Venus Abdollahi (Architectural Designer) completed her 6th week helping finish the Duplicable City Center roof designs. This week Venus completed the initial dormer design. For detailing the dormer, she is using Revit to create 3D details. She created the 3D isometric section of the dormer roof and added different layers of materials according to given documents. Venus also researched on attaching the opening to the main dome structure and designed the dormer based on initial research. Next she will complete research about the best way to attach the wooden frame to the structure. See pictures below.

John Aquino (Electrical Engineer) also completed his 6th week helping lead the Duplicable City Center Electrical designs. This week, John created an Electrical Panel schedule template to be used for the Duplicable City Center (DCC) project. Hopefully, this will be the standard template used moving forward as it has configurations for various types of distribution (i.e. for 1PH or 3PH systems). An electrical sheet has also been drafted to illustrate the page visually. In addition, a template for mechanical equipment was created, which will be integral during the coordination with the mechanical team on the types of HVAC equipment to be used. Pictures below show some of this work.

And Carlos Lillo (Engineering Technician) also completed his 6th week helping with the pallet furniture designs for the Duplicable City Center guest rooms. This week Carlos finished the 2nd Level Animations on 3 of 4 of the Pallet Furnitures, which are Bed Pallet, Chair Pallet and Table Pallet. Next week Carlos will focus fully on the Wardrobe. He found out how to solve a critical issue when rendering, where a strange black mesh appeared when animating the screws. He applied that fix to all the renders and the problem will no longer be present. Carlos also modeled new requested brackets, added more camera angles, and added color to highlight the components. Pictures below are related to this work.

Dipanshi Batra (Mechanical Engineer) completed her 4th week working on the Duplicable City Center connectors we’ll use to build the domes. This week Dipanshi engaged in continuation of active research on Failure Modes, connectors and different design concepts. 3 designs: Hub Connector “V”, Stamping/DIY “V”, and “V” sleeve are being explored. Our intent is not to go ahead with the custom manufactured hub as a final option but we still want to analyze how these contribute to joint strength and how there can be compensation for the same in our DIY design without the Hub. Pictures of some of this work are below.

Ibukun Shogbamu (Junior Mechanical Engineer) completed his 4th week working on the City Center HVAC Designs. This week Ibukun summarized the report comparing the viability of using either a regular minisplit multi zone HVAC setup or a Variable Refrigerant Flow (VRF) system into a spreadsheet. Implementation of the minisplit multi-zone system appears to be our best choice based on certain factors such as purchasing cost, installation costs, size, etc. The pictures below share some of this developing work.

Andrew Wilbert Vidianto (Mechanical Engineer) completed his 4th week working on the Duplicable City Center connectors we’ll use to build the domes. This week, Andrew spent most of his time researching on the common types of wood connectors, rules on metal bending, and lumber drilling. Andrew also designed and ran several finite element analysis tests on a designed V lumber connector using SolidWorks. With 2.2 factor of safety, research about maximum allowable load on 2×12 LVL lumber was conducted before running the FEA Tests. Pictures below are related to this work.

This week the core team continued working on the “Earthbag Construction Footers, Foundation, and Flooring” live page. The web editor on our team continued proofreading the article, checking for areas that weren’t clear, adding comments related to the marking of the construction site and the security of the trenches, and making some suggestions related to the text. The pictures below share some of this work.

The core team also began helping with the Aircrete and earthbag compression testing team. We developed a Google Sheet to track data collection and doubled checked numbers. We also continued the energy demand work. Now we are 95% complete with the energy estimates for the Straw Bale Village. Additionally, we reviewed work on the City Center and provided feedback. See related pictures below.

And the core team continued what we hope will be the final review of the Murphy bed assembly instructions. We worked in 3D designing the wall materials list using SketchUp, and provided suggestions with detailed descriptions and related images about updates and corrections that need to be integrated. Pictures below are related to this work.

Jose Luis Flores (Mechanical Engineer) completed his 56th week helping finish the Net-zero Bathroom component of the Earthbag Village. This week Jose Luis updated the tangential beam dimensions from a 2×2 cross section to a 2×4 in the SolidWorks renderings, making sure the orientation of the cross section had its longer edge vertical relative to the radial beam cross section. This orientation provides less bending stresses in the tangential beam. He added supports to the radial beams to illustrate the way they will be attached to the radial beams. Jose Luis also updated the roof access dimensions to make use of 2x4s instead of 4x4s, further reducing weight and cost and increasing space for the entrance. And he started updating the roof flash to comply with the newly updated dimensions. The pictures below show some of this work.

Stacey Maillet (Graphic Designer) completed her 46th week working on the final edits and revisions to the Murphy bed instructions. Stacey finished her final round of revisions and submitted a PDF for review. As of now, a total of 121 pages are complete and ready for review. The areas that still need work are translations, cover pages, and QR codes to lead to assembly videos. Edits of the past few weeks (that we didn’t report on) focused on looking over all small details to ensure consistency. She switched some of the wall pages to keep all the components for electrical work within the electrical group and not within the wall group assembly. Because many components were duplicated, she also checked all pages for wall assembly and matched back to the component and procurement pages. All of the parts and amounts of each hardware were recounted and Stacey added 3 new types of lumber, reorganized how many boards were needed of each, and updated the related pages. Attempts have been made to reduce page numbers by reducing the scale of some boards of lumber or indicating identically cut lumber boards once visually with x2 , x3, etc. Suggestions were made to further reduce pages by doubling up components pages to fit 2 parts on 1 page where she thinks this could be done too. Screenshots below are related to this latest progress.

Jeson Hu (Aerospace Engineer) completed his 23rd week helping with research related to the solar microgrid design, sizing, and cost analysis specifics. This week Jeson focused on addressing the comments from all the reviewers, including clarification, rephrasing, revising, and rewriting. He also integrated the recommendations from the micro inverter company representative (Oran) into the solar hardware report. Jeson then followed up with Vicente and the diesel generator companies for quotes and product choices. The pictures below share some of this developing work.

Daniela Andrea Parada (Civil Engineering Student) completed her 18th week helping with the Sustainable Roadways, Walkways, and Landscaping tutorial development. This week Daniela focused primarily on the roads for the site on AutoCAD. She determined which pathways needed to be re-access roads based on the codes she was researching, then divided the roads into two categories. One hatching was used for roads that needed truck access pathways, a pedestrian pathway, and a bicyclist pathway. The second hatching was for pedestrian and bike pathways. These hatchings were placed on the sides of the original pathways for easier design. Once completed, Daniela reached out to Carol to ensure that all comments and details were explained. Lastly Daniela made more edits to the AutoCAD parking lot design. This included changing the loop direction. Pictures of some of this work are below.

Aidan Geissler (Sustainability Researcher) completed his 15th week helping with 2nd-to-final review, feedback, and content editing. This week Aidan continued to provide management and guidance to the Aircrete and earthbag compression testing team. He regularly reviewed their research, plans, and results. He also provided comments and suggestions to guide their research, fill in gaps, and make the mixing plan sound, comprehensive, and replicable. Additionally, Aidan assisted with the organization of the document and provided helpful resources on Aircrete. Pictures below are related to this work.

Prabhath Ekanayake (Electrical Engineering Assistant) completed his 10th week working on the grid-tie connection details for our solar microgrid designs. This week Prabhath continued finalization by reviewing and adding additional content to various sections. Below are some images related to this work.

Nicholas K. de León (Project Management Adviser) completed his 9th week helping with review of Highest Good Housing research and related tasks. This week Nicholas continued his edits and proofreading, completing a few research documents that are now ready for publication. Direct edits also continued in other documents, many of which are showing great improvement. Pictures below show some of his review work.

Frank Roland Vilcapaza Diaz (Mechanical Engineer) completed his 8th week helping with the Earthbag Village energy specifics. This week Frank worked on the energy demand of the ultimate classroom and finished up the related excel sheet. He also checked the calculations for the tropical atrium and fixed some errors. The pictures below relate to this.

Shreyas Dayanand (Battery Research Engineer) also completed his 7th week helping with the solar microgrid design specifics related to electric vehicles and battery sizing. This week Shreyas attempted to re-download the Homer Grid app to continue his analysis for charging on his secondary laptop. He conducted an analysis to determine the cost for charging at 150 kW/hr for a generic EV for approximately 20 minutes. Shreyas described the details of the results by plotting graphical representations. He also looked into a few websites regarding previous cases for solar farm battery storage options. Pictures below relate to this work-in-progress.

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 6th week helping with the Aircrete and earthbag compression testing. This week the team put together a successful test cylinder for each of the mixes which include the standard aircrete and concrete and the 4 compressed earth as well as the light, lighter, heavy, and heavier aircrete mixes. The success came after one of the team members mixed the mixture in the actual cylinder and the mixture worked perfectly. Previously the mixture for aircrete was shrinking inside the cylinder and that was unknown why. However, after it was mixed in the cylinder itself, it stayed at the same height and worked. So the aircrete mixture has finally turned successful and can be remade exactly the same with no issues. The diagram in the photos show the difference in the mixing methods. Whenever mixing aircrete it is absolutely important to have the auger bit as submerged in the cementitious mixture as possible. After learning this the group was able to make very sturdy and successful aircrete without being too brittle. Mixing until the mixture color and distribution was even was also important, this mixing was between 10-15 minutes.The successful methods were repeated to show that the outcome was not based on random luck, but with solid evidence. The team also worked together to fill out the documentation. If everything can be double checked by the core team this week, the cylinders will be made for the group to let them cure for the final compression testing.

Tiffany Gao (Sustainability/Plastics Researcher) completed her 4th week as a researcher, reviewer, and web developer. This week Tiffany spent a lot of time organizing and researching non-recyclable recycling options. First, she made a copy of the 230-page document and cut it down to the essentials focused on community options. Then, she created a table with the recycling options with the options already researched to be a bit more organized. Finally, Tiffany was able to look into small-scale waste-to-energy or other nonrecyclable recycling options along with many recycling companies that can help. The pictures below share some of this developing work.

Ian Oliver Malinay (Energy Modeler/Analyst) completed his 30th week helping run the energy analysis calculations to help us achieve LEED Platinum status for the Duplicable City Center. This week, Ian attended to all comments or reviews from the team for the energy modeling narrative report. He included additional explanations to Climate Zone, building spaces, and the lighting classification. He also added some pictures in the narrative report as per request based on our latest design, and collaborated with Jae to finalize the needed narrative report for energy modeling. Please see below related screenshots of activity for reference.

Carol Nguyen (Civil Engineer) also completed her 16th week helping with the Sustainable Roadways, Walkways, and Landscaping tutorial development. This week, Carol wrote the additional information for all the layers of each pavement type based on the cross sectional drawings on CAD and online resources (porous concrete pavement, rigid pavement, and porous asphalt pavement). She also added the references to each section so people can check for additional information. The pictures below share some of this developing work.

Venus Abdollahi (Architectural Designer) completed her 5th week helping finish the Duplicable City Center roof designs. This week Venus completed the Copula roof and the updates. For detailing the roof, she used Revit to create 3D details. Venus created the 3D isometric section of the roof and added different layers of materials to achieve 62.18 R-value. She also completed the 3D modeling and 3D detailing downspouts for the City Center Living Dome roof and the Copula roof. See pictures below.

And Carlos Lillo (Engineering Technician) also completed his 5th week helping with the pallet furniture designs for the Duplicable City Center guest rooms. This week Carlos continued improving the animations by focusing on Angles, Camera Flow, Direction, and other aspects. He also added the metal texture that is going to be used for all the screws, and another for the brackets. They have different colors to simulate reality but also to identify them according to the market color pallet. The next item to be completed is the bed Pallet Furniture with full 1st and 2nd Lvl Animations and then the Wardrobe. The others are now at 99% complete. Pictures below are related to this work.

Dipanshi Batra (Mechanical Engineer) also completed her 3rd week working on the Duplicable City Center connectors we’ll use to build the domes. This week Dipanshi worked further on the Gate Report document. She analyzed the aspect of a variety of Hub options rather than connectors. Dipanshi is working on analyzing the feasibility of a variety of hub options. The options will be narrowed down with ease of manufacture followed by an FEA analysis. Pictures of some of this work are below.

Ibukun Shogbamu (Junior Mechanical Engineer) completed his 3rd week working on the City Center HVAC Designs. This week Ibukun drew a mock Variable Refrigerant Flow system on the floor plans of the Duplicable City Center using AutoCAD. He did this to obtain the refrigerant piping lengths and ensure that they do not exceed the maximum specified by the manufacturer of the proposed outdoor condenser units he chose. The pictures below share some of this developing work.

Andrew Wilbert Vidianto (Mechanical Engineer) completed his 3rd week working on the Duplicable City Center connectors we’ll use to build the domes. This week, Andrew spent most of his hours changing the Geodesic Dome structure into a single beam and researching appropriate material for the beam connector. Section 3 in the Hub Connector Analysis report was done, and the rest of the 2 triangular array structures were also changed into a single beam. Pictures below are related to this work.

This week the core team continued working on the “Earthbag Construction Footers, Foundation, and Flooring” live page. The web editor in our team finished editing the technical part of the One Community´s Earthbag Dome Footer Foundation and Flooring. He then began the final comprehensive read he does before submitting it to our final grammar, spelling, and clarity reviewer. In doing so he spotted some inconsistencies around the different earth dome related pages, so we need to address those first. The pictures below share some of this work and what he found.

The core team also continued work on the energy analysis for the solar farm and microgrid designs. We finished the electrical estimates for the residences, indoor and outdoor dining areas, public bathroom off the Major Hall, Minor hall, and staircase for the Straw Bale Village. We also started working on the HVAC electrical demands. See related pictures below.

And the core team corrected misalignment of some parts of the night stand that is part of the Murphy bed design. We provided new dimensions for affected parts to the volunteer that is updating the Murphy Bed Assemble Instructions.

Dean Scholz (Architectural Designer) continued helping with the Earthbag Village (Pod 1) 4-dome cluster designs. This was week #226 of Dean’s work and finished solving the lighting issue for the lamps and produced this test render:

Jose Luis Flores (Mechanical Engineer) completed his 55th week helping finish the Net-zero Bathroom component of the Earthbag Village. This week Jose Luis continued updating the exterior roof rendering of the net-zero bathroom. The updates included resizing the cross sectional dimensions of the tangential support beams attached to the radial beams. The previous design utilized 4 by 4 wooden beams, but was updated to use 2 by 2 wooden beams. This decision was made because of the reduced cross section of the radial beams, which in turn was caused by the reduction of roof panel weight. The difference in density between galvanized steel (7.14 g/cm3) and galvalume (3.75g/cm3) had not been previously taken into account. The advantage of the weight reduction is the reduction in needed support for the roof panels and the structure itself. The amount of lumber needed is also consequently reduced by the weight savings. The references needed for the positioning of the components in the rendering had to be heavily revamped due to these changes as well. The pictures below show some of this work.

Jeson Hu (Aerospace Engineer) completed his 22nd week helping with research related to the solar microgrid design, sizing, and cost analysis specifics. This week, Jeson communicated with the Micro Inverter company representative, Oran, regarding the inverter quote. Oran gave some professional advice on One Community’s solar farm project that Jeson added to the report. He then continued the diesel generator research and sent quote requests to all the companies that he researched. Jeson also researched used diesel generator options. He added the link to the used diesel website and PDFed the website into the dropbox. The pictures below share some of this developing work.

Daniela Andrea Parada (Civil Engineering Student) completed her 16th week helping with the Sustainable Roadways, Walkways, and Landscaping tutorial development. This week Daniela continued working on the Parking Lot Design through AutoCAD. She made alterations to the parking lot design based on team feedback. Various aspects were changed such as the angle of the parking stalls, adding a loop, and proposing stop sign locations. Pictures of some of this work are below.

Aidan Geissler (Sustainability Researcher) completed his 14th week helping with 2nd-to-final review, feedback, and content editing. Aidan was excited to return to the team after conducting avian surveys in the Southwest for 3 months. This week he supported the group working on Aircrete and earthbag compression testing. He reviewed their research, testing plans, cleanup plan, and photo and video documentation. He provided questions, comments, suggestions, and concerns to guide the development of the testing plan and documentation of the process.  Pictures below are related to this work.

Prabhath Ekanayake (Electrical Engineering Assistant) completed his 9th week working on the grid-tie connection details for our solar microgrid designs. This week Prabhath continued development of the grid tie tutorial by completing the assigned sections from the core team and did some modifications for my writing.  Below are some images related to this work.

Nicholas K. de León (Project Management Adviser) completed his 8th week helping with review of Highest Good Housing research and related tasks. This week Nicholas focused on direct edits, smoothing out the research and fixing grammatical/spelling mistakes to improve readability. It seems that many of the documents are simultaneously getting closer to being finished, while additions (apart from changes or edits) take the docs back a couple of steps. This is completely expected, only to be noted because it means that some tracking and backtracking is needed on Nicholas’ and other editors’ part. The phases these documents go through are less distinct, naturally, with this current “phase” being a mixture of many different ones: writing, editing, supplementing, and in some cases reordering and restructuring. After taking the time to re-read most of the six documents, Nicholas felt that the vast majority of the apparent minor issues had been solved, with the inability to find a lot of errors being a welcome sign. Thus, this week will be spent returning to more major issues like suggestions for clarification, and making edits, where needed, to large formatting problems. Pictures below show some of this work-in-progress.

Frank Roland Vilcapaza Diaz (Mechanical Engineer) completed his 7th week helping with the Earthbag Village energy specifics. This week Frank worked on estimating the areas of the rooms of the ultimate classroom to get an approximate energy demands on lighting for them. He also continued working on the energy demand for the ultimate classroom. The pictures below relate to this.

Shreyas Dayanand (Battery Research Engineer) also completed his 6th week helping with the solar microgrid design specifics related to electric vehicles and battery sizing. This week, Shreyas ran a more realistic scenario for the EV charging setup for 2 cases: DC Fast Charging and AC Charging. He gave detailed descriptions for the analysis and results and plotted the EV charger visit profile. Shreyas also made basic conclusions on the commercials of the same. Pictures below relate to this work-in-progress.

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 4th week helping with the Aircrete and earthbag compression testing. This week they worked together to create a standard test cylinder for each of the 3 mixes: aircrete, compressed earth, and concrete. After a few weeks testing and experimenting, the group thinks they have their concrete and stabilized earth portions of the project mostly figured out. These mixes were created to replicate what the final mix will be in terms of how much of each ingredient is added. The team also worked to make a video of how to do each mix such as measuring out ingredients, pouring ingredients together and mixing them, pouring the mixes into the cylinders, etc. One of the biggest issues that the group have been trying to figure out is in regards to the aircrete. The issue with the aircrete is that once it has been poured into the cylinder and it sits there for a while, the mix shrinks down either a quarter of the way down or half way down. Further research was done to understand why this was happening and what could be a solution. The group believes that there is something amiss about the measurements or the mixing process and will continue testing new approaches next week.

Tiffany Gao (Sustainability/Plastics Researcher) completed her 3rd week as a researcher, reviewer, and web developer. This week Tiffany began reading more about addressing non-recyclables, specifically about gas turbines and plasma gasification while edits were being made on her plastic recycling sections. Following edits, she transferred those edits of her documents to the WordPress website, spending some time relinking titles/headings, adding the videos and compressing photos. Tiffany also backed up her remaining sources, links and pictures into Dropbox and the Resources list on her WordPress draft. The pictures below share some of this developing work.

This week the core team continued editing the Grid-tie Energy Infrastructure Tutorial from Grid Connection Details and Solar Incentives and Tax Credits, through page 14.

The core team also worked on the Duplicable City Center Project Specification and Design Basis documentation. This week we completed the initial table of contents and significant content additions to the sections including Background, References, Definitions and Nomenclatures, Duplicable City Center Conceptual Design, and Architectural Design Specifications. About 16 pages in total. Pictures below share some of this work-in-progress.

Carol Nguyen (Civil Engineer) also completed her 15th week helping with the Sustainable Roadways, Walkways, and Landscaping tutorial development. This week, Carol worked on the CAD drawing of the master plan to estimate the length of each roadway type for the roadway cost calculation. She attached the overlay of the background image into CAD and made it to scale. Carol drew the roads of the master plan image into the CAD drawing so it can be used to calculate the length of the roadway. She also wrote the description for flexible pavement layers and their functions to better explain the cross section drawings. The pictures below share some of this developing work.

Neel Shanbhag (Control Systems Electrical Engineer) completed his 9th and final week helping with the Duplicable City Center Electrical designs. This week Neel completed the power and energy needs for various structures in the Duplicable City Center. This included estimating the hours that each appliance will be used for summer and winter. Pictures related to this work are below.

John Aquino (Electrical Engineer) also completed his 5th week helping lead the Duplicable City Center Electrical designs. This week, John produced electrical lighting sheets. Pictures below show some of them.

Venus Abdollahi (Architectural Designer) completed her 4th week helping finish the Duplicable City Center roof designs. This week Venus completed the City Center Living Dome roof and the Copula roof. For detailing the roof, she used Revit to create details and callouts. She also created the 3D isometric section of the roofs and she added different layers of materials to achieve a 62.27 R-value for the Copula roof and 75.1 R-value for the City Center Living Dome roof. See pictures below.

And Carlos Lillo (Engineering Technician) also completed his 4th week helping with the pallet furniture designs for the Duplicable City Center guest rooms. This week Carlos updated the brackets for the Pallet Table, added new brackets to the pallet bed, and included animation of screws for both items. Second-level animations are in process for the Pallet Chair. For the Pallet Table he generated the first half of the final render, which took about 9 hours. From here on forward he’ll generate renders with a faster engine until everything is approved and then final renders will be produced. Pictures below are related to this work.

Ibukun Shogbamu (Junior Mechanical Engineer) completed his 2nd week working on the City Center HVAC Designs. This week Ibukun completed a research paper needed to make an informed choice regarding the HVAC system of the Duplicable City Center and submitted it for review and feedback. The paper describes and compares the current ductless minisplit system for cooling and heating the center and an alternate Variable Refrigerant System. He compared the expected costs, efficiency, and ease of maintenance of both systems. The pictures below share some of this developing work.

Andrew Wilbert Vidianto (Mechanical Engineer) completed his 2nd week working on the Duplicable City Center connectors we’ll use to build the domes. This week’s focus was mostly redesigning the Geodesic Dome structure by building it using the 2” x 12” of LVL beam using SolidWorks. A proper LVL beam dome structure with a correct measurement and dimension completion is necessary before designing the beam connectors. Pictures below are related to this work.

This week the core team completed 26 hours managing One Community emails, social media accounts, interviewing potential new volunteer team members, and managing volunteer-work review and collaboration not mentioned elsewhere here. The picture below relates to this. We also did more testing and bug identification within the Beta version of the Highest Good Network software.

Jaime Arango (Graphic Designer) completed his 34th week, creating graphics for these blogs and our related YouTube video previews. This week Jaime created images for weekly progress updates #512, #513, #514, #515, and #516.

Chris Weilacker (Software Engineer) completed his 34th week working on the Highest Good Network software. Chris worked on testing the auto-assignment functionality a second time, as well as adding text to describe the timing of the badge auto-assignment each week and demoed the project for a video on the badge functionality and double checked that volunteers can not change their count and/or delete the badges from the report button. Chris also added a space after the description text on the report. Although the badge testing did not work as perfectly as expected the error was in the fact that someone else was running the backend locally for the dev environment which double-counted the badge count increases on certain badges, and on the new category badges (for the economics category which Chris’s dev-admin account did not earn last week due to him not inserting enough hours) it got two badges as the code added in the badges. It worked as expected on upgrading the badges from 100 to 200 due to that code replacing badges instead of adding badges, so, all-in-all, it worked as expected and this would not be an issue on the beta or production site as there is but one server running. Pictures below are related to this work.

Narek Tsaturyan (Software Engineer) joined the team and completed his 1st week working on the Highest Good Network software. This week Narek worked to set up the local environment. Once he completed the orientation and setup process he continued development of the summary bar component. Narek worked to improve some of the spacing issues, added links, refactored some code, and added padding into the text to improve UI. The pictures below are related to this work.

This week the core team continued review and feedback on the Sustainable Roadways, Walkways, and Landscaping and then began editing the Grid-tie Energy Infrastructure Tutorial including the Table of Contents, Introduction, What is a Grid-tie Sustainability Plan, and Why Open Source the Grid-Connection Process.

Ian Oliver Malinay (Energy Modeler/Analyst) completed his 29th week helping run the energy analysis calculations to help us achieve LEED Platinum status for the Duplicable City Center. This week, Ian processed the energy modeling narrative documents as reference for LEED whole building energy simulation. He is now focusing on how to make a narrative document for a baseline model. Unlike the proposed model that typically uses information from construction documents or architectural design, the baseline model shall follow the rules or requirements from ASHRAE standard 90.1-2010. The ASHRAE 90.1 standard baseline model is useful to determine how efficient the actual building is. The energy modeler utilized this model to determine the percentage energy savings of the building. Please see below progress photos for reference.

David Na (Project Management Adviser/Engineer) completed his 22nd week helping with input and management of the Parking Lot and Sustainable Roadways, Walkways, and Landscaping tutorial development, as well as the City Center Water Catchment Designs. David started the week assigning action items to his team. Throughout the week, David reviewed his team’s CAD work for the parking lot design that Daniela had been working on, and Carol’s pavement and walkway cross sections. He also went through and reviewed each comment that had been assigned to him on the Google Doc and either resolved it or gave feedback. As David reviewed everyone’s work, he inserted images to help with reader understanding throughout the doc. Lastly, David put in time to build an action item list for his team’s workload for next week.  Pictures below are related to this work.

Carol Nguyen (Civil Engineer) also completed her 14th week helping with the Sustainable Roadways, Walkways, and Landscaping tutorial development. This week, Carol added more details into the Main Pavement Types Comparison Table and Alternative Pavement Types Comparison Table (comparison criteria, score, ranking, etc.). She also incorporated the CAD drawings for sectional views of pavements into their respective portions in the report. Carol made edits to her roadway initial and annual maintenance costs tables, adding new requirements for separation of road classification of arterial, collector and local roads. She then wrote a section for the porous asphalt pavement on its problems with excess stormwater and on gutters as an alternative to controlling flooding. The pictures below share some of this developing work.

Neel Shanbhag (Control Systems Electrical Engineer) completed his 8th week helping with the Duplicable City Center Electrical designs. This week Neel continued working on power and energy needs for various structures in the Duplicable City Center. He specifically worked on a general class of items and areas for different appliances and updated the related information on the spreadsheet. Pictures related to this work are below.

And Carlos Lillo (Engineering Technician) completed his 3rd week helping with the pallet furniture designs for the Duplicable City Center guest rooms. This week Carlos began producing 2nd level animations for the pallet furniture assembly animations previously generated. The new assemblies he completed animations for were the Bed Frame, Table, and Wardrobe. 3/4 of the products already have 1st Lvl Animations except the Table because of the processing time that the render requires. Carlos should end the 2nd level animations for all the products by next week. Pictures below are related to this work.

Dipanshi Batra (Mechanical Engineer) also completed her 2nd week working on the Duplicable City Center connectors we’ll use to build the domes. This week Dipanshi worked further on the Gate Report document. She read up on failures of Geodesic Domes, DIYness of Hubs, and furthered her FMEA knowledge on Geodesic Domes. Dipanshi also read up on cost analysis and benchmarking testing requirements. She then created a Test Plan for the testing of the design of Hub Connectors. Pictures of some of this work are below.

Ibukun Shogbamu (Junior Mechanical Engineer) joined the team and completed his 1st week working on the City Center HVAC Designs. This week Ibukun started doing research to be able to compare the initial mini-split HVAC system chosen for the Duplicable City Center to the proposed VFR/VFV systems to determine which would be most feasible. He described both systems and listed advantages and disadvantages for both. Ibukun then started research into the purchase and installation costs for both of the systems. The pictures below share some of this developing work.

Also, Andrew Wilbert Vidianto (Mechanical Engineer) joined the team and completed his 1st week working on the Duplicable City Center connectors we’ll use to build the domes. This week’s focus was learning more about City Center Hub Connector Analysis from the Google Docs, taking notes, and making a summary of the overall task. Andrew did research on some pre-existing connectors for the dome structure, made a rough draft of the hub connector types that are necessary for the structure, and started re-designing and re-calculating the dimension for the row 1 type 1 triangle in Solid Works for the first angle type. Pictures below are related to this work.

This week the core team completed 28 hours managing One Community emails, social media accounts, interviewing potential new volunteer team members, and managing volunteer-work review and collaboration not mentioned elsewhere here. The picture below relates to this. We also did more testing and bug identification within the Beta version of the Highest Good Network software.

Jaime Arango (Graphic Designer) completed his 33rd week, creating badges for the Highest Good Network software and graphics for the blogs. This week Jaime created images for weekly progress updates #507, #508, #509, #510, and #511. He also made changes on some of the badges he created in the past. He updated the badges for Torchbearer, Trailblazer, Chief and Cowboy team leadership badges.

Chris Weilacker (Software Engineer) completed his 33rd week working on the Highest Good Network software. Chris worked on finishing up the Create and Edit badges functions by leading Patrick on the entry of the majority of the badges into the dev system with OJ including the categories available, personal max, leadership badges etc. Chris also integrated comments from Jae on the bugs found in the badge system. Pictures below are related to this work.

Yueru Zhao (Software Engineer) completed her 23rd week working on the Highest Good Network software. This week Yueru mainly worked on the UI modification for the reporting page. She modified the UI on the reporting landing page, and changed the button style, adding the count numbers to the button. Yueru also made the whole page centered. On the people reporting page, she aligned the buttons, added a heat map for blue square data visualization, and made it so users can view the blue square frequency in a chart and dynamically see when they were assigned. The pictures below are related to this work.

This week the core team continued moving the updated content from the “Earthbag Construction Footers, Foundation, and Flooring” Google Doc to the One Community’s website. The focus this week was merging the content already published with the new content, editing the images so they are ready for the site, starting to place the images, adding crowdfunding video placeholders, creating and hyperlinking the table of content, and identifying missing information in the tools and materials section. The pictures below share some of this work.

The core team also completed a detailed review of the aircrete compression testing plans and purchased the related materials for the Aircrete and earthbag compression testing.

And the core team continued work on the energy analysis for the solar farm and microgrid designs. We completed the solar energy demands for the Game Room, Library, Gym, and Meeting Room within the Straw Bale Village. See related pictures below.

Continued Work on the Energy Analysis for the Solar Farm and Microgrid Designs – Click for Page

Jose Luis Flores (Mechanical Engineer) completed his 53rd week helping finish the Net-zero Bathroom component of the Earthbag Village. This week Jose Luis began updating the AutoCAD roof plan of the net-zero bathroom. The update included the addition of diagrams for the construction and installation of the flash used to shield the radial beams of the exterior roof. The added diagrams included details on the flash and fastener positioning. The positions of the fasteners were detailed by illustrating the distances from the flash edges. He updated the rest of the roof plan so the diagrams following this step could coincide with the additional fasteners used to secure the flash. The following step will be adding these diagrams to the tutorial/instructions of the net-zero bathroom and text that will elaborate the importance and steps for the construction and illustration. The pictures below show some of this work.

Stacey Maillet (Graphic Designer) completed her 45th week working on the final edits and revisions to the Murphy bed instructions. This week Stacey was working on wrapping up all the current comments so that we can resubmit all the instructions for checking. She thinks we will be able to resubmit the PDF by next week for another look in finer detail at the assembly and checking in 3D. Some of the renders still need to be redone so that they have a more consistent look throughout. Currently some of the graphics are really old and use colors and visuals that look lower quality than the newer renders. Screenshots below are related to this latest progress.

Jeson Hu (Aerospace Engineer) completed his 20th week helping with research related to the solar microgrid design, sizing, and cost analysis specifics. This week, Jeson added a description paragraph to the perovskite solar cell section before the advantages and disadvantages. He also added a solar panel hardware comparison table and a table description in the cost analysis section to give a better understanding of product specs and costs. He rephrased and rewrote the master conclusion, cleared up confusion in the solar inverter summary, and added the inverter comparison tables to the summary. In addition, Jeson added a total solar hardware cost table and description to the master conclusion. He also added more diesel generators to the diesel generator research table and added product specs, contacts, and linked the resources. The pictures below share some of this developing work.

Daniela Andrea Parada (Civil Engineering Student) completed her 14th week helping with the Sustainable Roadways, Walkways, and Landscaping tutorial development. This week Daniela made edits to the Earthbag Village road. Using AutoCAD, she widened the street and pushed back the village domes. In doing so, more space was created. New designs were then proposed so that more domes can be included. She then removed the duplicate sources on the Roadway, Walkways, Gutters, and Parking Lot Report. During this time Daniela found two extra resources that had been incorporated so she uploaded them to the Dropbox and formatted them within the resources section. Once completed Daniela added easements to the AutoCAD file she had previously been working with. Although there were some difficulties scaling the new satellite image for the easement, she was able to measure the correct length of the paths. Lastly Daniela created a CAD for the parking lot design. Pictures of some of this work are below.

Katherine Cao (Chemical Engineer) also completed her 9th week working on the grid-tie connection details for our solar microgrid designs. This week Katherine made corrections on the Grid-tie system report according to the core team and other reviewer’s feedback. Katherine also updated the table of contents and references, and formatted all the tables. Pictures below are related to this work.

Prabhath Ekanayake (Electrical Engineering Assistant) completed his 7th week working on the grid-tie connection details for our solar microgrid designs. This week Prabhath continued development of the grid-tie tutorial by updating all his past content based on feedback from the core team and other reviewers. Below are some images related to this work.

Shreyas Dayanand (Battery Research Engineer) also completed his 4th week helping with the solar microgrid design specifics related to electric vehicles and battery sizing. This week, Shreyas worked on building a techno-economical model for analyzing and optimizing the charging time and period for electric vehicles within the community. He started off by installation, setup and learning the software – HOMER GRID. He also applied the basic settings and combinations of the previously researched data into the analysis that was carried out. Pictures below relate to this work-in-progress.

Jarot Tamba (Civil Engineering Intern) completed his 3rd week helping with the Aircrete and earthbag compression testing. This week Jarot’s focus was on performing precise calculations for the standard concrete and aircrete mixes. In the beginning of the week the group spent time transferring soil for their stabilized earth mixes. They also performed initial tests for aircrete and concrete. The tests were not successful. The concrete slump was excessive and the aircrete shrank too much. In order to get accurate proportions the group decided to do another week of testing. Pictures below relate to this work.

Dominick Banuelos (Civil Engineering Intern) also completed his 3rd week helping with the Aircrete and earthbag compression testing. This week Dominick worked with the team to create the first test cylinders filled with aircrete and standard concrete. Through the process of working on calculations, doing a sieve test, and slump test, the first cylinders were created. After having these poured and sitting for 48 hours, some issues were noted and will be properly fixed to ensure the best product. The cylinders were then put into the compression testing at the end of the week to see what the psi strength of the concrete was. The numbers were a bit low so Dominick will work the following week to achieve a greater psi that can withstand the required strength. Below are some images related to this work.

John Paul D. Matining (Civil Engineer Intern)  completed his 3rd week helping with the Aircrete and earthbag compression testing too. This week John and his team’s main focus was on initial week testing of standard concrete and aircrete. The bulk share of the time was on testing the ratios which were calculated beforehand and tweaking them. One problem that arose is most of the ratios for the aircrete were based on a full batch of aircrete so calculating and finding the right amount of aircrete for one cylinder took a bit of time to accomplish and will need to be rechecked before full test is to be done. Lastly, other tests that were accomplished included the slump test for the right amount of water, the clay sand test to find percentage of clay in soil mix, and the sieve test to find out distribution of the aggregates. The pictures below relate to this work.

And Marcus Nguyen (Civil Engineering Intern), also part of the Aircrete and earthbag compression testing team, completed his 3rd week as well. This week Marcus and his group did initial testing for the Aircrete and Stabilized Earth Project. During the test, Marcus figured out what materials and equipment was needed for the actual testing procedure. He also learned how to use a slow-motion camera to prepare video recording when doing the compression testing. The group was also able to revise their calculations for the testing proportions and determined the best route for testing. Throughout the week there were results that were not acceptable and will be fixed this week.  To better understand how to work and use the equipment a test of the compression testing equipment was used as well. The pictures below share some of this developing work.

Lastly, Tiffany Gao (Sustainability/Plastics Researcher) joined the team and completed her 1st week as a researcher, reviewer, and web developer. This week Tiffany settled into her new experience working for One Community. She spent her initial hours going through the orientation/onboarding, figuring out how to work with WordPress, and reading through One Community’s articles to familiarize herself with the format. Tiffany then quickly picked up her work by starting with her first task: editing the“Best Small and Large-scale Plastic Recycling, Reuse, and Repurposing Community Options ” article. After spending an abundance of time carefully combing through word choice, grammar, and spelling, she compiled a Google Document containing all her personal comments, questions, notes, etc. to improve the article. Tiffany also began researching and looking into the non-recyclables article. The pictures below share some of this developing work.

This week the core team continued review and feedback on the Sustainable Roadways, Walkways, and Landscaping tutorial. We cleaned up the Roadways doc by deleting all addressed comments and had a phone conversation with the civil engineer in charge of that doc. We then reviewed the “Choosing the Best Solar Hardware Research & Report” doc dealing with solar hardware components, solar panel types, recyclability of components, etc. This doc is completed as much as possible until the creators make final additions.

Ian Oliver Malinay (Energy Modeler/Analyst) completed his 28th week helping run the energy analysis calculations to help us achieve LEED Platinum status for the Duplicable City Center. This week, Ian processed the energy modeling narrative documents for LEED. He continued the whole building energy simulation process documents as reference for the Duplicable City Center project. As of today, he is almost done with the energy process guide for the proposed design building and is waiting for other inputs to be completed, particularly HVAC and service hot water design. Process guide for the baseline building design will be provided after he completes the proposed building simulation process guide. Please see below progress photos for reference.

David Na (Project Management Adviser/Engineer) completed his 21st week helping with input and management of the Parking Lot and Sustainable Roadways, Walkways, and Landscaping tutorial development, as well as the City Center Water Catchment Designs. David started the week by sending out the weekly action items to his team. He then went on a phone call with a core team member to discuss all comments and questions remaining on the google doc. David also spent some time making revisions on the google doc that haven’t been changed. He also spent time working on a list of action items left for next week for his team. With the remaining time that he had left, David researched and read through some of the SF Greywater Manual to prepare for his next project with a different core team member. Pictures below are related to this work.

Carol Nguyen (Civil Engineer) also completed her 13th week helping with the Sustainable Roadways, Walkways, and Landscaping tutorial development. Carol worked on the 3 main pavements comparison table/Google Spreadsheet comparing flexible asphalt, rigid concrete, and composite. She also worked on the roadway initial and annual maintenance costs tables, putting in the equations to calculate linear ft, square feet and cubic feet costs for 3 types of roads. Carol also removed the pre-edit version in the table on spreadsheets, added the references, and incorporated the CAD drawings to the respective sections in the report. She added details into the introduction of the bikeway design as well. The pictures below share some of this developing work.

Neel Shanbhag (Control Systems Electrical Engineer) completed his 7th week helping with the Duplicable City Center Electrical designs. This week Neel worked on power and energy needs for the various zones in the Duplicable City Center. Pictures related to this work are below.

John Aquino (Electrical Engineer) also completed his 4th week helping lead the Duplicable City Center Electrical designs. This week, John has set up the RCP drawings for each floor containing light fixtures, and added the RCP xref files to the Electrical Dropbox folder. In addition, a sample lighting sheet was developed for reference; named as E201 and is now in the Drawings subfolder under the main Electrical folder. Next steps will be to develop an excel spreadsheet highlighting sheet numbers/names, as well as drafting a sample electrical details sheet typical for the scope of work. Pictures below show some of this work.

Venus Abdollahi (Architectural Designer) completed her 3rd week helping finish the Duplicable City Center roof designs. This week Venus created the 3D isometric section of the City Center Living Dome roof. For detailing the roof, she’s using Revit to create details and callouts. She also added different layers and started to annotate them and create callouts. The isometric section is still in process and she will be adding the gutters for the Living Dome. See pictures below.

And Carlos Lillo (Engineering Technician) completed his 2nd week helping with the pallet furniture designs for the Duplicable City Center guest rooms. This week Carlos continued developing his skills in Blender. He improved some models and produced several render pictures and animations. At first Carlos encountered problems like “noisy” pics or pixelated animations but after testing formats and filters he overcame these challenges and created higher quality render pics and perfect fluid animations. Given the time it takes to produce a render Carlos decided to shorten the time of the videos, fortunately they can be edited in any video edition program to extend their times. Pictures below are related to this work.

Dipanshi Batra (Mechanical Engineer) also joined the team and completed her 1st week working on the Duplicable City Center connectors we’ll use to build the domes. This week, Dipanshi successfully finished her onboarding checklist and read up on One Community’s entire project to gain a better understanding of the task at hand. She moved on to reading and understanding past research to make better notes. This was followed by the formation of a new document, where all new work will be documented. A work flow was established and Dipanshi then came up with a format for the rest of the work and began research specific to the hub connector designs. Pictures of some of this work are below.

This week the core team completed 19 hours managing One Community emails, social media accounts, interviewing potential new volunteer team members, and managing volunteer-work review and collaboration not mentioned elsewhere here. The picture below relates to this. We also did more testing and bug identification within the Beta version of the Highest Good Network software.

Chris Weilacker (Software Engineer) completed his 32nd week working on the Highest Good Network software. This week Chris worked on the Badge Report including the ability to download a PDF report of persons selected/featured badges or a report of all badges that a user has earned. Chris also worked with Patrick on setting up the Edit Button for Badge Management and Patrick is now working using some of Chris’s code as a base to add type’s and the different data needed to make a Badge get auto assigned. Pictures below are related to this work.

Yueru Zhao (Software Engineer) completed her 22nd week working on the Highest Good Network software. This week Yueru was working on trying to make the “edit task” function work in the people reporting page. Unfortunately, after spending several hours, she did not figure it out. Yueru also did research on the UI change so the resources button will change to a head down arrow when clicking. She plans to spend more time to really make it work.  Apart from that, Yueru worked on the selected options UI on the project reporting page. The pictures below are related to this work.

This week the core team started moving the updated content for the “Earthbag Construction Footers, Foundation, and Flooring” tutorial from the Google Doc generated by the researchers to the One Community’s website. We worked to make sure the format matches our standards, solved situations where the special characters are not supported by default on WordPress (like the square root symbol), and began to make the table of content clickable and more detailed. The pictures below share some of this work.

Moved Content of Earthbag Construction Footers, Foundation, and Flooring” Tutorial to Our Website – Click for Page

The core team also completed a thorough review of the best solar hardware report for our solar microgrid designs.

Completed Review of the Best Solar Hardware Report for Our Solar Microgrid Designs – Click for Page

Jose Luis Flores (Mechanical Engineer) completed his 52nd week helping finish the Net-zero Bathroom component of the Earthbag Village. This week Jose Luis continued researching information on how snow accumulates on sloped roofs and the effects the environment has on the snow. He also researched ways to control the motion of the snow when on the roof. His findings determined that temperature fluctuation causes snow to slide abruptly on sloped roofs. This poses a danger to the structural integrity of the interior roof of the Net-Zero Bathroom. The most practical solution was to retrofit snow guards onto the roof in order to hold the accumulated snow in place and slowly allow it to melt. He rendered the exterior roof of the Net-Zero Bathroom with snow guards to help the user understand where to install them. He then rechecked his calculations of the maximum allowable snow depth on the Net-Zero Bathroom and found it to be 34.5” and a scaling factor of 1.15 when average snow depth is under 30”. Jose Luis added this information to the tutorial/instructions of the Net-Zero Bathroom and gave construction recommendations. He will finish the AutoCAD roof plan of the Net-Zero Bathroom and review the tutorial/instructions to fix discrepancies and/or errors. The pictures below show some of this work.

Continued Researching Information on How Snow Accumulates on Sloped Roofs – Click for Net-zero Bathroom Page

Jeson Hu (Aerospace Engineer) completed his 19th week helping with research related to the solar microgrid design, sizing, and cost analysis specifics. This week, Jeson contacted Garkane to arrange a phone meeting next week to discuss the rate schedule that One Community will fall into. He also continued on his diesel generator research, finding products, inputting specs and contact information. He additionally linked the spec information to the product name cell for future reference and then focused on addressing the comments in the Choosing the Best Solar Hardware Research & Report. Jeson added first, second, and third generation solar cells definition, cleared up a few confusing areas, and added image descriptions. The pictures below share some of this developing work.

Continued Solar Microgrid Design, Sizing, and Cost Analysis Specifics Research – Click for Page

Daniela Andrea Parada (Civil Engineering Student) completed her 13th week helping with the Sustainable Roadways, Walkways, and Landscaping tutorial development. This week Daniela completed working on the roadway easements for the property. She then worked on a new design for the fire access road of the Earthbag Village. The new design that was implemented expanded the road to 35 feet, which was the smallest width the team was able to come up with. Once approved Daniela then began to work on this change for the complete village layout. This week Daniela also created a resources page for the Roadways, Walkways, Gutters and Parking Lot Report and uploaded the resources to the Dropbox. Pictures of some of this work are below.

Completed Working on the Roadway Easements for the Property – Click for Sustainable Roadways Page

Katherine Cao (Chemical Engineer) also completed her 8th week working on the grid-tie connection details for our solar microgrid designs. This week Katherine read feedback from peers and made corrections on the report. Katherine also redid the tables, and made them look professional, and did some formatting for the report. Pictures below are related to this work.

Continued Working on the Grid-tie Connection Details for Our Solar Microgrid Designs – Click for Page

Nicholas K. de León (Project Management Adviser) completed his 6th week helping with review of Highest Good Housing research and related tasks. Nicholas continued editing documents, going through the first three documents on his list and working up from there. He cleared prior suggestions that had the necessary improvements, continuing to make suggestions where necessary. On a positive note, Nicholas believes that many of the documents are nearly at a stage where a final read can be done. Pictures below show some of this work-in-progress.

Continued Helping With Review of Highest Good Housing Research and Related Tasks – Click for Page

Prabhath Ekanayake (Electrical Engineering Assistant) completed his 6th week working on the grid-tie connection details for our solar microgrid designs. This week Prabhath continued development of the grid tie tutorial by rewriting assigned sections based on team feedback. Below are some images related to this work.

Continued Development of the Grid Tie Tutorial for Our Solar Microgrid Designs – Click for Page

Shreyas Dayanand (Battery Research Engineer) also completed his 3rd week helping with the solar microgrid design specifics related to electric vehicles and battery sizing. Following up with last week, Shreyas came up with a more illustrative block diagram to explain the Vehicle-to-Grid concept for the current generation of Electric Vehicles. He found an option to consider the Tesla Model X as an option for the community in accordance with its features that would be helpful. Shreyas illustrated with an example of how much energy can be used from an electric vehicle battery pack considering all the governing factors. He started to look into the different battery storage options that are available to use for the solar-farm application and the parameters to be established for the same. He also consolidated information regarding the different levels of Electric vehicle charging the related parameters like the power delivered and charging time.  Pictures below relate to this work-in-progress.

Continued With the Solar Microgrid Design Specifics Related to Electric Vehicles and Battery Sizing – Click for Page

Jarot Tamba (Civil Engineering Intern) completed his 2nd week helping with the Aircrete and earthbag compression testing. This week Jarot dove further into gathering information regarding the different proportions which Aircrete users have found to have worked successfully. Jarot found some useful information from the Honey Do Carpenter Youtube channel which focuses on the construction of small rectangular homes using Aircrete. There was information provided regarding the best curing methods (covered and out of direct sunlight and high temps), how to protect aircrete from a mold (using visqueen plastic wrap), and how to reinforce aircrete (pouring mixture over grid patterned wire mesh). Further research was also done about superadobe which was a bit difficult. Jarot’s group cannot control what dirt or clay mixture they receive so initial tests must be run to determine the best mixture. Jarot and the group also met on campus during the week to scope out the workplace and discuss some important aspects of the project. They also met to finalize their plans for initial testing, documentation, video recording and cleaning and maintenance plans. Pictures below relted to this work.

Continued Helping With the Aircrete and Earthbag Compression Testing – Click for Aircrete Page

Dominick Banuelos (Civil Engineering Intern) also completed his 2nd week helping with the Aircrete and earthbag compression testing. This week Dominick worked with the whole team to create the initial mixing plan, materials, testing plan, cleaning plan, video plan, and project schedule. Following what the group came up with will allow for the project to run smoothly and on time. Below are some images related to this work.

Worked to Create Initial Mixing Plan, Materials, Testing Plan, Cleaning Plan, Video Plan, and Project Schedule – Click for Aircrete Page

John Paul D. Matining (Civil Engineer Intern) completed his 2nd week helping with the Aircrete and earthbag compression testing too. This week John completed more research on Aircrete and the Earthbag mixes and created a proposed plan that was then combined with the group’s individual plan to create the group’s proposed plan. This included plans for documentation of the project, a materials proposal, mixture proposal, schedule, and cleanup plan. These documents included calculations, ratio mixtures, camera uses, and other details needed to conduct and fully document the compression testing. The pictures below relate to this work.

Completed More Research on Aircrete and the Earthbag Mixes and Created a Proposed Plan – Click for Aircrete Page

And Marcus Nguyen (Civil Engineering Intern), also part of the Aircrete and earthbag compression testing team, completed his 2nd week as well. This week Marcus did further research in order to figure out the overall schedule for the Aircrete and Stabilized Earth Compression Testing. He also attended the meetup on his campus to meet with Jae, his group members, professor, and internship liaison to go over the necessary information needed to run the test. Later in the week, Marcus and his group gathered all the information to meet up and shared their research in order to come up with a schedule and plans for approval. The pictures below share some of this developing work.

Continued Helping With the Aircrete and Earthbag Compression Testing – Click for Earthbag Village Engineering Page

This week the core team continued review and feedback on the Sustainable Roadways, Walkways, and Landscaping tutorial. The focus for the week was making comments and addressing some older comments related to the doc. This week’s work has taken us through page 128 and included sections on Rigid Pavement Design and the Glossary.

Continued Review and Feedback on the Sustainable Roadways, Walkways, and Landscaping Tutorial – Click for Page

The core team also completed a thorough review of the best solar hardware report for our solar microgrid designs.

Completed Review of the Best Solar Hardware Report for Solar Microgrid Designs – Click for Page

Ian Oliver Malinay (Energy Modeler/Analyst) completed his 27th week helping run the energy analysis calculations to help us achieve LEED Platinum status for the Duplicable City Center. This week, Ian worked on the energy modeling narrative updates as reference for the future projects to be processed to ensure the LEED platinum certification. Ian produced a narrative report that is general and easy to follow. The provided procedures also considers the ASHRAE 90.1-2010 standard that is applicable to the LEED 4/4.1 version of the rating system. This report can be considered as an official manual of Duplicable City Center to properly design the energy model of the building. The inputs here are more efficient than the performance of the Baseline Design so we can make sure that the energy model attains the highest possible LEED credit points. Please see below related pictures for reference.

Continued to Update the Energy Modeling Narrative Documents – Click for Heating and Cooling Page

Carol Nguyen (Civil Engineer) also completed her 12th week helping with the Sustainable Roadways, Walkways, and Landscaping tutorial development. This week, Carol worked on the report, added more details in the writing, added references for the requested sections, and resolved the comments that had already been addressed. For the Rigid Pavement section, she added the pictures to illustrate types of rigid pavement (CRCP, JPCP) and “Expansion Terminal Joint Section Between CRCP and Structure Approach Slab”. Carol also added more details in the “Dowel and Tie Bar” and “Pavement Smoothness” section. In addition, she worked on the comparison table for alternative pavement options. The pictures below share some of this developing work.

Continued Helping With the Sustainable Roadways, Walkways, and Landscaping Tutorial – Click for Page

Neel Shanbhag (Control Systems Electrical Engineer) completed his 6th week helping with the Duplicable City Center Electrical designs. This week he continued researching and understanding various papers for solar sizing for the Duplicable City Center. Pictures related to this work are below.

Continued Researching and Understanding Various Papers for Solar Sizing for the Duplicable City Center – Click for Page

Venus Abdollahi (Architectural Designer) completed her 2nd week helping finish the Duplicable City Center roof designs. This week Venus started development of the City Center Living Dome roof design by detailing the roof, making the isometric section, and adding R-value specifics. For detailing the roof, she’s using Revit to create details and callouts. For the City Center Living Dome roof, she added different layers and annotated them. The isometric section is still in process but Venus was able to complete details and the 3D isometric section. See pictures below.

Started Development of the City Center Living Dome Roof Design – Click for Page

And Carlos Lillo (Engineering Technician) joined the team and completed his 1st week helping with the pallet furniture designs for the Duplicable City Center guest rooms. Carlos started the week importing the Duplicable City Files into the Blender Environment. By the end of it, he was able to complete his firsts deliverables: All Renders. Carlos encountered a problem when generating the renders after including the LED system (noisy renders) but after a while he was able to overcome said problem by increasing the render quality and using a denoiser filter. Pictures below are related to this work.

Joined the Team and Began Helping With the Pallet Furniture Designs for the City Center Guest Rooms – Click for Page

This week the core team completed 32 hours managing One Community emails, social media accounts, interviewing potential new volunteer team members, and managing volunteer-work review and collaboration not mentioned elsewhere here. The picture below relates to this. We also did more testing and bug identification within the Beta version of the Highest Good Network software.

Completed 32 Hours Managing One Community Emails, Etc. – Click for Home Page

Jaime Arango (Graphic Designer) completed his 32nd week, returning to creating badges for the Highest Good Network software. This week Jaime created the New Max-Personal Record and Most Hours in a Week badges. You can see both below.

Created the New Max-personal Record and Most Hours in a Week Badges – Click for HGN

Chris Weilacker (Software Engineer) completed his 31st week working on the Highest Good Network software. This week Chris worked on the Badge Report/History including the ability to set up to 5 featured badges and for Admins to delete badges in a user’s history and change badge counts on the User Profile page. Chris also placed the listing of featured badges (up to 5 by rank) on the user profile page. Pictures below are related to this work.

Continued Working on the Highest Good Network Software – Click for Page