One Community is forwarding the evolution of sustainable infrastructure through open source blueprints, plans, and tutorials covering food, energy, and housing. We are also open sourcing sustainable and what we call “Highest Good” approaches to education, for-profit and non-profit economic design, social architecture, fulfilled living, global stewardship practices, and more.
Click on each icon to be taken to the corresponding Highest Good hub page.
One Community’s physical location will forward this movement as the first of many self-replicating teacher/demonstration communities, villages, and cities to be built around the world forwarding the evolution of sustainable infrastructure. This is the December 12th, 2021 edition (#455) of our weekly progress update detailing our team’s development and accomplishments:
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One Community is forwarding the evolution of sustainable infrastructure through Highest Good housing that is artistic and beautiful, more affordable, more space efficient, lasts longer, DIY buildable, and constructed with healthy and sustainable materials:
This week the core team completed a detailed review and provided feedback on the upcoming Eco-community Electric Vehicle Integration tutorial. Contributing in the path forwarding the evolution of sustainable infrastructure. Pictures below show some of this.
Dean Scholz (Architectural Designer) continued helping with the Earthbag Village (Pod 1) 4-dome cluster designs. This was week #232 of Dean’s work and the focus was more lighting testing and adjustments and the focus was testing new cover strategies to make the bottle lights look real. The process is ongoing. Contributing in the path forwarding the evolution of sustainable infrastructure.
Jose Luis Flores (Mechanical Engineer) completed his 73rd week helping finish the Net-zero Bathroom component of the Earthbag Village. This week Jose Luis began creating a rain barrel priming section for the Net-Zero Bathroom instructions/tutorial. The purpose of priming the rain barrels is to ensure a watertight seal, optimal flow, and longevity of the system. He first began by researching the best practices used for creating rain collecting barrels.
Materials and tools needed were listed and searched online, the results were added to the cost analysis spreadsheet. Then he began rendering the parts and their assembly on SolidWorks to provide a clearer description of the process. The remaining renderings will be completed and organized in descriptive step-by-step instructions. Contributing in the path forwarding the evolution of sustainable infrastructure. The pictures below show some of this work.
Stacey Maillet (Graphic Designer) completed her 56th week working on the final edits and revisions to the Murphy bed instructions. This week, she read through all of the comments made by the other team members within the drafted instructions PDF. Many of the comments pertain to increasing legibility by changing font sizes and typeface weights. There are many areas still to apply all of these recent changes. The instructions are evolving to be more suitable on a digital platform and the flow of information needs to be correct.
The electrical section still needs a lot of work and maybe some supplemental links to videos using the QR codes. As Stacey updates a page, she is re-saving the PDF so that everyone can check the updates. After most of the issues are addressed, she will re-save a new PDF so that some of the pages that are out of order can be reassembled. Contributing in the path forwarding the evolution of sustainable infrastructure. Screenshots below are related to this latest progress.
Daniela Andrea Parada (Civil Engineering Student) completed her 24th week helping with the Sustainable Roadways, Walkways, and Landscaping tutorial development, mainly focused now on the Earthbag Village components. Daniela began the week by reviewing new comments and reading through emails Jae and David had recently sent concerning the drainage plan of the Earthbag Village. Both David and Jae had left some suggestions on the design so she started implementing them on the CAD. As the drainage plan for the inner sector was undecided, Daniela decided to create two designs.
She printed the current layout and hand drew two ways of formatting the drainage for the North and South areas of the atrium. She then incorporated one of the designs onto AutoCAD and sent the PDF to David and Jae. Later Daniela downloaded the newest CAD version of the Aquapinis and Walipinis and altered the text so that it would be easier to see in the screenshots/PDFs that were taken for the report.
She then continued writing the paragraph concerning the plumbing section. Lastly, Daniela took images from a video Jae provided and she included them into the report for the Aquapinis and Walipinis. Contributing in the path forwarding the evolution of sustainable infrastructure. Pictures below are related to this work.
The Compression Team consisting of Dominick Banuelos (Civil Engineering Intern), Jarot Tamba (Civil Engineering Intern), John Paul D. Matining (Civil Engineer Intern), and Marcus Nguyen (Civil Engineering Intern) completed their 18th week helping with the Aircrete and earthbag compression testing. This week, the Compression Testing Team brainstormed with Dr. Bai and tested 3 different aircrete mixes. These included a standard, 20% more cement, and one with less water. For all 3 mixes, the team used 2 more ounces of drexel soap per 5 gallons of water, so 6 ounces instead of 4 ounces.
The results were that the standard and 20% more cement mixes worked perfectly and were a success. The one with less water failed and shrunk. Using 2 ounces more soap created a better foam texture compared to the 4 ounce foam mixture. This soap mixture was high quality with a shaving cream consistency with a consistent density of 95 g/l.The Team also began working on recreating the aircrete testing slides that provide more detail on previous aircrete mixes. Contributing in the path forwarding the evolution of sustainable infrastructure. Pictures below are related to this work.
Becky Xin (Volunteer Web Editor) completed her 6th week helping with web design, now focused on the Sustainable Roadways, Walkways, and Landscaping tutorial. This week Becky wrapped up going over copying over all the texts and headings over. Then she checked and fixed all the anchor links that didn’t work, rechecked the formatting, and started building the captions and setting up the photos. Contributing in the path forwarding the evolution of sustainable infrastructure. Pictures below are related to this work.
Karla Ulloa (Front end Developer) completed her 3rd week working on the open source Dome-Home Site Clearing, Preparation, and Maintenance staging page. This week Karla did a couple more edits including making sure all links were accessible as well as backing up all the resources. She started a new page that will hold all tools, equipment and machines related to the complete construction of One Community.
Karla was able to remove images from the dome-home to the tools grid and anchor them to then create a link from dome-home to the new tools page. Contributing in the path forwarding the evolution of sustainable infrastructure. See below for pictures related to this work.
One Community is forwarding the evolution of sustainable infrastructure through a Duplicable and Sustainable City Center that is LEED Platinum certified/Sustainable, can feed 200 people at a time, provide laundry for over 300 people, is beautiful, spacious, and saves resources, money, and space:
This week Luis Manuel Dominguez (Research Engineer) completed his 30th week helping with research related to the City Center Eco-spa designs. This week, Luis focused on the wiring of the electronic components for the City Center Spa design. His goal is to have a centralized control panel that can adjust each of the components for optimized performance on any given day. The control panel will take inputs from the user and the environment to adjust the system to ideal needs. Luis plans to use software and electrical relays to create this modularity within the system.
He is currently looking through the market for options that suit the needs of the team’s design. Simultaneously, he gathered wiring information from the manual of each component to understand what will fit the design requirements. Contributing in the path forwarding the evolution of sustainable infrastructure. Pictures below are related to this work.
Frank Roland Vilcapaza Diaz (Mechanical Engineer) completed his 23rd week helping, now with content related to the Solar Microgrid sizing. This week Frank worked on the tutorial for the SAM program. He explored different performance models that the program provides as well as the different financial models that can be used. The system design and the inverters variables and function were explained and summarized in the document. Contributing in the path forwarding the evolution of sustainable infrastructure. The pictures below relate to this.
Venus Abdollahi (Architectural Designer) completed her 21st week helping finish the Duplicable City Center designs. This week, Venus had a zoom meeting with her supervisor and changed the roof according to the new updates of the roof plan. She added the new roofs to the previous Revit file and then started changing the section B_B. Contributing in the path forwarding the evolution of sustainable infrastructure. See pictures below.
Xuanji Tang (Architectural Designer) completed her 14th week working on Duplicable City Center architectural review and updates related to the structural code. This week the focus was working on making the columns consistent on each floor, and moving the elevator for enough clearance space next to the newly moved columns, expanding the south stair with movement of the elevator shaft, and adding the columns to support the storage room next to the north stair. Contributing in the path forwarding the evolution of sustainable infrastructure. Pictures below are related to this work.
Huiya Yang (Volunteer Architectural Designer) completed her 11th week working on the Duplicable City Center architectural review and updates related to the structural code. This week, after Xuanji fixed the alignment problem in the CAD drawings, Huiya started to work on modifying the columns, walls, and doors of the first-floor Living Dome according to the latest CAD drawings. While importing the second-floor cad drawings into the SU model, Huiya marked out walls that are not aligned on the second-floor CAD drawings and let Xuanji know. Contributing in the path forwarding the evolution of sustainable infrastructure. Pictures of some of this work are below.
Yuxi Lu (Architectural Designer) also completed her 9th week working on the Duplicable City Center architectural review and updates related to the structural code. This week Yuxi met with the team to discuss changes that occurred within CAD. She then continued to work on the SketchUp model, fixing extruding appliances due to shell curvature collision and shaping the interior wall to fit within the shell. Since columns and a few other items were readjusted in CAD last and this week, those were fixed accordingly in SketchUp too.
Items such as ductwork for kitchen and columns could be colliding and required discussion. Railings on the second floor Dining Dome were also modeled for consistency with that of the first floor’s, along with custom length at corners and ends. Pictures of some of this work are below.
And George Koshy (Design Engineer) completed his 8th week working on the Duplicable City Center connectors we’ll use to build the domes. This week George refamiliarized himself with the hub connector work he is doing for the City Center dome. He looked into the enquiry about the bolts being too close in the bracket and the possibility of reducing the plate thickness. He redesigned the V bracket with a 0.2 inch steel sheet.
He ran a static analysis of the bracket to identify any signs of failure. The maximum stress on the bracket exceeded the maximum material yield strength. He took a look into DIY options to bend such heavy gauge metals. Contributing in the path forwarding the evolution of sustainable infrastructure. The pictures below relate to this work.
Min Jung Koo (Industrial Designer) completed her 4th week working on the Duplicable City Center dormer assembly instructions. This week, Min Jung worked on the first and second floor dormers. The second floor dormer has the basic structures ready, but she still needs to maybe add some pieces to support the structure a little more.
She also received the first floor structure file from Tatyana and worked on tracing the structure and importing it into the Rhino file. Then she started making the garble dormer for the first floor as well. Contributing in the path forwarding the evolution of sustainable infrastructure. The pictures below relate to all of this.
Yuran Qin (Volunteer Web Editor) also completed her 5th week helping with web design. This week Yuran added a few more revisions to the almost-finished “Grid-tie Energy Infrastructure Tutorial” and the “Community Health Insurance” page. She also reviewed the Dome-Home Site Clearing, Preparation, and Maintenance page and created the Solar Incentive Rates in West Coast States page. Then she started working on creating the page Most Sustainable Lightbulbs and Light Bulb Companies page. Contributing in the path forwarding the evolution of sustainable infrastructure.
One Community is forwarding the evolution of sustainable infrastructure through Highest Good food that is more diverse, more nutritious, locally grown and sustainable, and part of our open source botanical garden model to support and share bio-diversity:
This week the core team continued the comprehensive review and final edits and additions to our Sheep research. This week, we wrote a detailed introduction for the guardian animals section and resolved the remaining comments on the sheep document. We also spent time improving miscellaneous sections, focusing on sentence structure and organizing previously researched tidbits.
This process is now complete, and all that remains is a final read-through and review of the entire document before it is ready for publishing. Contributing in the path forwarding the evolution of sustainable infrastructure. See below for the pictures related to this work.
The core team also continued with the rewrite of the walipini, aquapini, and zenapini design document. We reviewed comments and spreadsheets associated with this and started reconciling water needs per planted area of a greenhouse. We also responded to comments on the permaculture work, checked in regarding the review of work for the HVAC systems, and edited the aircrete slides and sent assignments to the Compression Team. Contributing in the path forwarding the evolution of sustainable infrastructure.
The core team additionally worked on updating the Chicken Coop Building Instruction document. We updated old images that still showed the old roof design. We also generated images and provided descriptions for items and steps for installation of upper wall studs on the east and west sides, installation of frames for electrical fans, and finished the section of instructions about placement of sidings with cut out openings for the electrical fans on the east and west walls. Contributing in the path forwarding the evolution of sustainable infrastructure. Pictures below are related to this work.
Qiuheng Xu (Landscape Designer) completed her 62nd week volunteering, now helping with the Aquapini & Walipini external landscaping details. This week Qiuheng worked on fixing the material conflicts, improving people movement effects, and adjusting planting materials in Lumion video rendering.
She reedited people’s movement effects into moving slowly along a circle as suggested and updated the rendering video for next round comments. Also, she was able to address a few comments for the CAD plan. Contributing in the path forwarding the evolution of sustainable infrastructure. Pictures below are related to this.
And Brian Storz (Culinary Project Manager) completed his 12th week helping lead the completion of the Transition Food Self-sufficiency Plan, Transition Kitchen designs, Food Procurement and Storage plan, and related menu and meal plans. This week Brian worked on developing new recipes for the transition kitchen.
He also worked on developing ideas that would utilize products from the previous meal and day and began working closely with Anna Cheal, the new Culinary Nutritionist on developing new recipes and helping her understand the needs of the culinary project. Contributing in the path forwarding the evolution of sustainable infrastructure. Below are some images related to this.
Anna Cheal (Culinary Nutritionist) joined the team and completed her first week, helping with the Transition Food Self-sufficiency Plan and related menu and meal plans. This week, she finished the orientation/onboarding process and began creating a two-month menu. So far, she has developed four recipes: Bok Choy Stir Fry, Sweet Potato Buddha Bowl, Salmon and Chickpea Salad, and Brown Rice Cakes. Two recipes were reviewed, and she incorporated feedback into her revisions.
Anna met with Brian for a task clarification meeting, which helped her better understand the processes and needs of HG food. She then began considering breakfast specialty items and ways to incorporate leftovers Contributing in the path forwarding the evolution of sustainable infrastructure. The pictures below relate to this work.
One Community is forwarding the evolution of sustainable infrastructure through Highest Good education that is for all ages, applicable in any environment, adaptable to individual needs, far exceeds traditional education standards, and more fun for both the teachers and the students. This component of One Community is about 95% complete with only the Open Source School Licensing and Ultimate Classroom construction and assembly details remaining to be finished. We’ll report on the final two elements to be finished as we develop them.
With over 8 years of work invested in the process, the sections below are all complete until we move onto the property and continue the development and open sourcing process with teachers and students – a development process that is built directly into the structure of the education program and everything else we’re creating too:
One Community is forwarding the evolution of sustainable infrastructure through a Highest Good society approach to living that is founded on fulfilled living, the study of meeting human needs, Community, and making a difference in the world:
This week the core team completed 25 hours managing One Community volunteer-work review not included above, emails, social media accounts, web development, new bug identification for the Highest Good Network software, and interviewing and getting set up new volunteer team members. Contributing in the path forwarding the evolution of sustainable infrastructure. Pictures below show some of this.
Aidan Geissler (Sustainability Researcher) completed his 29th week helping with 2nd-to-final review, feedback, and content editing that is now focused on the Health Insurance research and page. This week the Health Insurance research page went live and Aidan continued working on updates and revisions to this content. He reviewed and made minor edits to the live page, continued to double-check, revise, and add links for the details for the health insurance plan that has been analyzed, and finalized compiling estimates for monthly premiums for the top 9 plans.
He also worked on writing the concluding pieces of the narrative. Contributing in the path forwarding the evolution of sustainable infrastructure. Pictures below show some of this work-in-progress.
Aleksandra “Alex” Gorkovenkø (Graphic Designer) also completed her 17th week working on images for our open source social media strategy. This week she worked on corrections for several posters from the previous weeks. Alex also worked in Illustrator and Procreate on icon images, creating several versions for multiple icons. Contributing in the path forwarding the evolution of sustainable infrastructure. Some of her latest meme creations are below.
Hannah Gardner Hattersley (Software Engineer) completed her 10th week working on the Highest Good Network software. This week, Hannah continued to work on the streak badge bug. She will reach out to Chris this week to discuss logic. The logic is rather complex and it mainly seems to be an issue of when to award, increment, or replace and what the helper functions are actually doing to the database when called.
Hannah will continue to work on cleaning up the badge details bugs and making final contributions during her final week next week. Contributing in the path forwarding the evolution of sustainable infrastructure. Pictures below are related to this work.
Navya Madiraju (React.js/MongoDB Full Stack Developer) completed her 5th week helping with the Highest Good Network software. This week Navya worked on this issue: New Max Personal Record Badge Needs to be Updated. She fixed and committed the code and raised the PR. Navya also looked into the Api issue by googling the challenges and tried to find the solution for the HGN development environment loading the timer so slowly. Contributing in the path forwarding the evolution of sustainable infrastructure. Pictures below are related to this work.
Kitan García (Software Engineer) completed his 3Rd week helping with the Highest Good Network software. ‹â€¹Kitan spent the week trying to fix the same bug from last week, but was having a lot of trouble with the getTeammates() function. The behavior has not been making sense to him, though he understands the logic. Kitan’s having trouble with MongoDB and the schemas we currently have in place, and has reached out for help.
Attached are pictures of his work and what has been giving him trouble. The main issue is being able to retrieve the correct team given the team id. Contributing in the path forwarding the evolution of sustainable infrastructure. Pictures below are related to this work.
And, last but not least, Jin Hua (Web Marketer and Graphic Designer) helped us create and update our Adwords campaigns for promoting the Best Small and Large-scale Community Glass Recycling, Repurposing, and Reuse Options page. Contributing in the path forwarding the evolution of sustainable infrastructure. See pics below related to this.
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