Upgrading the Traditional City – One Community Weekly Progress Update #430

This week the core team continued edits and additions to the “Best Small and Large-scale Plastic Recycling, Reuse, and Repurposing Community Options ” article. This week we made some additions to the “comparing plastic recycling options” table, made more changes in the google doc to get more consistent formatting, and transferred more sections including embedded videos to the live web page, most of them from the Precious Plastics section. The pictures below share some of this developing work.

Continued Edits to the Best Plastic Recycling, Reuse, and Repurposing Community Options – Click for Page

The core team additionally continued double checking the Earthbag Village energy specifics for the solar microgrid design, sizing, and cost analysis. We double checked the time-of-day draws for everything, did additional research on water heaters and pumps, and wrapped up the energy work for this village. We then started organizing what will be needed to complete this same process for the Straw Bale Village. See below for related pictures.

Continued Double Checking the Earthbag Village Energy Specifics for the Solar Microgrid Design – Click for Page

Jose Luis Flores (Mechanical Engineer) completed his 48th week helping finish the Net-zero Bathroom component of the Earthbag Village. This week Jose Luis researched information on the effect snow loads have on metal roofing. The research helped gather the values of the loads needed to help determine the maximum size of the Net-Zero Bathroom’s exterior roof with and without external support columns. The depth of the snow was set at 30in and a density of 0.0041lb/in², with these values he calculated the weight at various roof sizes depending on the number of tangent support beams. A graph and trendline was generated from these calculations and was added to the initial roof weight function. Based on the weight limit of the walls and the weight of the snow, the exterior roof would need external support in order to withstand the weight of snow in a snowy climate. The weight function including the weight of snow was added to the calculations for the maximum roof size with external columns. The centroid of the radial beam was constrained to be 75% closer to the external support than the centroid of the wall. With this parameter Jose Luis calculated an increase in roof area of 40%. With the calculations complete, he will add the findings to the Net-Zero Bathroom instruction/tutorial and elaborate for simplification. The pictures below show some of this work.

Researched Information on the Effect Snow Loads Have on Metal Roofing – Click for Net-zero Bathroom Page

Stacey Maillet (Graphic Designer) completed her 42nd week working on the final edits and revisions to the Murphy bed instructions. This week Stacey completed the comments received for the wall section. She worked on getting the correct boards and colors in each drawing and also tried to regulate many of the line weights and colors used throughout. All of this is to make the look more consistent overall so it will be easier to understand. Screenshots below are related to this latest progress.

Continued Working on the Final Edits and Revisions to the Murphy Bed Instructions – Click for Page

Vicente J Subiela (Project Management Adviser) completed his 21st week working on the solar microgrid design, sizing, and cost analysis specifics. Vicente has continued the supervision of the ongoing energy tasks and documents, resolving questions, making contributions and suggesting conclusions. After the data collection by Jeson on the solar charges and credits comparison (see vertical bar graph) the best economic balance is expected for Rocky Mountain Power. This is the conclusion provided that the energy supplied to the grid is equal or higher than the energy taken from the grid (expected energy balance scenario). Vicente then focused on the grid tie tutorial and short comments on the hot tub design and the grid tie tutorial. He also updated the Gann diagram for the timeline follow-up and confirmed the high energy needs of the electric car chargers as part of the energy analysis.

Continued Working on the Solar Microgrid Design, Sizing, and Cost Analysis Specifics – Click for solar Page

Jeson Hu (Aerospace Engineer) completed his 16th week helping with research related to the solar microgrid design, sizing, and cost analysis specifics. This week, Jeson focused on completing the solar incentive research report. He quoted the program detailed in the report, fixed the citation issues, and rewrote some of the company solar rate descriptions. Jeson also added descriptions on the document and website links. He then numbered all the images and converted all solar incentive research resources into pdf files and added them to the dropbox folder. The pictures below share some of this developing work.

Focused on Completing the Solar Incentive Research Report – Click for Solar Energy Page

Daniela Andrea Parada (Civil Engineering Student) completed her 12th week helping with the Sustainable Roadways, Walkways, and Landscaping tutorial development. This report requires various sections on pavement types such as those previously worked on for decomposed granite and porous asphalt. The new section focuses on porous concrete. Throughout this week Daniela researched and collected information regarding the design and functionality of porous concrete. She then organized the information to better relay the research to the audience. Additionally Daniela wrote paragraphs on the structural design, maintenance, advantages, disadvantages and application of this pavement. She researched for more properties concerning porous concrete in order to ensure that the information provided properly summarizes the pavement type. Lastly, Daniela reviewed the section and edited the material. Pictures of some of this work are below.

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

Katherine Cao (Chemical Engineer) also completed her 4th week working on the grid-tie connection details for our solar microgrid designs. This week Katherine did research on transmission line cost on the grid-tie system. The costs vary largely depending on power voltage, design conditions, and land and environment requirements. Data was studied and analyzed in the report. Katherine also reviewed the whole report and wrote the introduction section. Pictures below are related to this work.

Did Research on Transmission Line Cost on the Grid-tie System – Click for Solar Energy Page

Frank Roland Vilcapaza Diaz (Mechanical Engineer) completed his 3rd week helping with the Earthbag Village energy specifics. This week Frank worked on refining the areas on the atrium and researching on the thermal properties of the materials composing the tropical atrium. He also researched on the conditions necessary for the plants and trees to grow. The pictures below relate to this work.

Continued Helping With the Earthbag Village Energy Specifics – Click for Page

Prabhath Ekanayake (Electrical Engineering Assistant) completed his 3rd week working on the grid-tie connection details for our solar microgrid designs. This week he focused on completing research, writing the report section “what to expect from the county”, and sending emails to energy departments to gather information for the report. Below are some images 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 3rd week helping with review of Highest Good Housing research and related tasks. Nicholas dedicated this week’s work to primarily editing research documents, starting with the Solar Incentive Rate Research, Best Solar Hardware Research Report, and City Center Hot Tub Design. In addition to this, Nicholas wrote a quick guide to help future researchers and document preparers, which he put up for use on Saturday. Pictures below show some of this work-in-progress.

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

Last but not least, Wanda Field (Research and Review Assistant) completed her 2nd week helping with research and reports review and additional research for the Duplicable City Center and Highest Good Housing components. This week, Wanda focused on power consumptions of the Earthbag Village and Straw Bale Village. She finalized her calculations and findings on the best water heating system for the Earthbag Village communal eco-showers, and came to the conclusion that tank water heaters will be the most power efficient option. She then started the overall power consumption table for the Straw Bale Village. Finally, Wanda edited and reviewed a section of the Grid-Tie Energy Infrastructure Tutorials documents and revisited the comments she left on the documents she reviewed last week. See below for some pictures related to this.

Focused on Power Consumptions of the Earthbag Village and Straw Bale Village – Click for Earthbag Village

This week the core team completed 24 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. Also more testing and bug identification was done within the Beta version of the Highest Good Network software.

TEKtalent Inc. (a custom programming solutions company) also continued with their 45th week helping with the Highest Good Network software. This week Nithesh and TEK Talent team worked on the bug fixes and security vulnerability scan and fix for npm packages. The bug reported in beta testing for assigning projects and teams has been fixed and a pull request is raised for the same along with the package version changes. Pictures below show some of this work.

Worked on the Bug Fixes and Security Vulnerability Scan and Fix for Npm Packages – Click for Highest Good Network

Chris Weilacker (Software Engineer) completed his 28th week working on the Highest Good Network software. This week Chris worked on the auto blue square function for missing submitting a summary because there was a problem where someone submitted a weekly summary and didn’t get an email but they got an infringement. Chris fixed this by changing the window for submission and auto-email sending so it was only 1 minute apart instead of 5. Pictures below are related to this work.

Worked on the Auto Blue Square Function for Missing Submitting a Summary – Click for Highest Good Network

Yueru Zhao (Software Engineer) completed her 18th week working on the Highest Good Network software. This week Yueru made some modifications based on feedback from last week. She made the resources column wider and showed only one user in the button. Yueru also changed the filter name to”Filter Off” and made the “Filter Off”” the first option and alphabetized all the rest of the options. She also modified and capitalized the table columns to use Resources, Class, Start Date, End Date, etc. The pictures below are related to this work.

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

Mike Suarez (Software Developer) also completed his 6th week working on the Highest Good Network software. Mike worked on fixing the timer. He added a field to the Timer collection in the db: started, lastAccess so start get’s set upon Start and Pause. This is used to calculate the time passed instead of counting seconds in the app. LastAccess is used to timeout the user. Every 1 minute the app checks the time passed and automatically the last access gets refreshed. If the app gets closed without stopping or pausing and more than 5 mins passes, the next time the timer starts, it gets picked from the Last Access value. The pictures below are related to this work.

Worked on Fixing the Timer for Highest Good Network Software – Click for Page

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