Forwarding a Global Cooperative – One Community Weekly Progress Update #440

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.

Forwarding a Global Cooperative ” Earthbag Construction Footers, Foundation, and Flooring review

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.

Forwarding a Global Cooperative ” Earthbag Construction Footers, Foundation, and Flooring

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.

Forwarding a Global Cooperative ” Murphy bed assembly instructions

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.

Forwarding a Global Cooperative ” Initial power estimations needed for the solar microgrid design

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.

Forwarding a Global Cooperative ” Murphy bed instructions

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.

Forwarding a Global Cooperative ” Net-zero Bathroom component of the Earthbag Village

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.

Forwarding a Global Cooperative ” solar microgrid design, sizing, and cost analysis specifics

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.

Management and guidance to the Aircrete and earthbag compression testing team

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.

Forwarding a Global Cooperative ” Earthbag Village energy specifics

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.

Forwarding a Global Cooperative ” solar microgrid design specifics

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.

Aircrete and earthbag compression testing, Forwarding a Global Cooperative

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.

Duplicable City Center Project Specification and Design Basis documentation

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.

energy analysis calculations, Forwarding a Global Cooperative

David Na (Project Management Adviser/Engineer) completed his 24th 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 spent the majority of his hours looking through the google doc for Roadways, Landscaping, and Walkways to resolve remaining comments from Nicholas, Bear, and Jae.

Due to the changes to the amount of square footage that will be associated with porous pavement and decomposed granite, David needs to meet with Carol to discuss the changes. With that, the final costs and calculations for our roadways and walkways will be complete. Pictures below are related to this work.

Forwarding a Global Cooperative – Parking Lot and Sustainable Roadways, Walkways, and Landscaping

Carol Nguyen (Civil Engineer) also completed her 18th week helping with the Sustainable Roadways, Walkways, and Landscaping tutorial development. This week, Carol worked on updating the Excel calculations with new data for length and area of roadway.

She also fixed the mistakes in the spreadsheet from last week. Carol created 2 tables in 2 separate sheets on Google Drive for Roadway Unlimited Expense Option and Roadway Minimized Expense Option. Pictures below are related to this work.

Forwarding a Global Cooperative – Sustainable Roadways, Walkways, and Landscaping

Luis Manuel Dominguez (Research Engineer) completed his 18th week helping with research related to the City Center Eco-spa designs. This week Luis continued his work on the electrical budget for the City Center Spa.

He was able to pick up where his teammates left off in order to create an understandable table that communicates the power requirements of each component in the Spa system. It covers systems such as the pump, heater, controllers, and valves.

The table also structures any potential design constraints that may impact each component’s power consumption. Once the numbers are finalized, they can be incorporated into the City Center Spa solar budget for design.

In the coming weeks Luis aims to research the remaining components to see on average how much electricity they draw and what will work best with our system. Pictures below are related to this work.

Forwarding a Global Cooperative – City Center Eco-spa designs

Daniela Andrea Parada (Civil Engineering Student) completed her 11th week helping with the Sustainable Roadways, Walkways, and Landscaping tutorial development. This week Daniela focused on the site roadways.

An unlimited expense plan was created last week and this week a minimized expense plan was made. Daniela worked on AutoCAD to create these designs and incorporated fire access paths, bikeways, and pedestrian paths. In the last design Daniela edited she included the unimproved bike/foot paths.

Daniela included some additional information to an excerpt she wrote last week to help explain the rationale behind the pathways. She also continued making small edits to the Earthbag Village. Pictures of some of this work are below.

Forwarding a Global Cooperative – Sustainable Roadways, Walkways, and Landscaping

Venus Abdollahi (Architectural Designer) completed her 7th week helping finish the Duplicable City Center roof designs. This week Venus completed the dormer wall and roof design. For detailing the dormer, she is using Revit to create 3D details.

She created the 3D isometric section of the dormer wall, changed different layer materials in the wall and dormer window position in order to meet the International Building Code fire code/egress, and researched on attaching openings to the main dome structure.

From this Venus created two options for the dormer frame. Next she will complete the 3D SketchUp file and add both windows and downspouts on the dome based on the new position of the dormer windows. See pictures below.

Forwarding a Global Cooperative – Duplicable City Center roof designs

John Aquino (Electrical Engineer) also completed his 7th week helping lead the Duplicable City Center Electrical designs. This week, John set up the plotting tools that shall be used to print out drawings for issuance/QA/QC.

In addition, a drawing file has been created containing typical electrical details that may be potentially used for this project and/or future ones. All of these items will be located inside the Electrical folder for the DCC project. Pictures below show some of this work.

Forwarding a Global Cooperative – helping lead the Duplicable City Center Electrical designs

And Carlos Lillo (Engineering Technician) also completed his 7th week helping with the pallet furniture designs for the Duplicable City Center guest rooms. This week Carlos sent 3/4 of the furniture renders for review so he can produce the final renders, he also began working on the wardrobe by importing brackets and screws with animations.

At first it seemed like the wardrobe was going to take longer because of the size, but given that the animations were the core and most of them were produced in previous renders it seems this is going to be the easiest one. Pictures below are related to this work.

Forwarding a Global Cooperative – Pallet furniture designs for the Duplicable City Center guest rooms

Dipanshi Batra (Mechanical Engineer) completed her 5th week working on the Duplicable City Center connectors we’ll use to build the domes. This week Dipanshi focused on the StarPlate form of connector and started CAD work on making the same based on angles from the pre-designed geodesic dome.

FMEA and testing requirements for StarPlate were also explored. These gazebo-applied connectors can be applied to a larger frequency Geodesic Dome. Discussion around direction of design intent also culminated. Pictures of some of this work are below.

Forwarding a Global Cooperative – Duplicable City Center connectors

Ibukun Shogbamu (Junior Mechanical Engineer) completed his 5th week working on the City Center HVAC Designs. This week Ibukun edited and formatted the “Most Viable HVAC system comparison” spreadsheet and summarized the written report.

He also began the cost estimation for the Minisplit system, considering the costs of all indoor and outdoor units as well as all the installation accessories. To get an accurate value he measured the refrigerant piping lengths from the AutoCAD drawings and obtained the total cost of refrigerant piping based on these values. The pictures below share some of this developing work.

Forwarding a Global Cooperative – City Center HVAC Designs

Andrew Wilbert Vidianto (Mechanical Engineer) completed his 5th week working on the Duplicable City Center connectors we’ll use to build the domes. Andrew spent most of his hours exploring the V-connector bracket design on SolidWorks Finite Element Analysis and continuing the Hub Connector Analysis report.

Several thickness of metal plates were tested by FEA with a combination of holes. Price and material availability were also explored for the cost consideration. Pictures below are related to this work.

Forwarding a Global Cooperative – Duplicable City Center connectors

And Xuanji Tang (Architectural Designer) joined the team and completed her 1st week working on Duplicable City Center architectural review and updates related to the structural code.

She finished her onboarding process, had a meeting about her tasks, listed the occupancy classification of the rooms according to the California Building Code Chapter 3 and Chapter 4, and reviewed the window designs and added the comments. The pictures below relate to this work.

Forwarding a Global Cooperative – Duplicable City Center architectural review

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