Reinventing Our Cities – One Community Weekly Progress Update #466

Reinventing our cities as models of sustainability and a more enjoyable living experience is long overdue. It’s possible and can provide a more luxurious lifestyle too. One Community is supporting this through open source and free-shared city designs that integrate sustainable food, energy, housing, education, for-profit and non-profit economic design, social architecture, fulfilled living, global stewardship practices, and more.

• Here’s our project overview
• Here’s our world-change methodology
  
• Here’s how this becomes self-replicating
• Here’s how we are open source and free-sharing all the do-it-yourself designs

OUR MAIN OPEN SOURCE HUBS

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. This is the February 27th, 2022 edition (#466) of our weekly progress update detailing our team’s development and accomplishments:

Reinventing Our Cities
One Community Progress Update #466

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ONE COMMUNITY WEEKLY UPDATE DETAILS

HIGHEST GOOD HOUSING PROGRESS – REINVENTING OUR CITIES

One Community is reinventing our cities 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:

• • • Learn about: Our Upcoming Crowdfunding Campaign
    • Learn about the different village models: 7 Sustainable Village Models
    • Visit the open source portals for the first two: Earthbag Village OS Hub | Straw Bale Village OS Hub

This week Dean Scholz (Architectural Designer) continued helping with the Earthbag Village (Pod 1) 4-dome cluster designs. This was week #241 of Dean’s work and he is now working on the actual renders. The picture below shows the newest perspective with added external plant elements and some internal decoration details.

Stacey Maillet (Graphic Designer) completed her 65th week working on the final edits and revisions to the Murphy bed instructions. This week Stacey continued her focus on updating several of the lumber cutting pages. She added the measurements and made sure all the boards and cutting places are spaced evenly and uniform throughout. She also standardized the font sizing and made sure the colors on the plywood match the coding system. Screenshots below are related to this latest progress.

Jose Luis Flores (Mechanical Engineer) completed his 83rd week helping finish the Net-zero Bathroom component of the Earthbag Village. This week Jose Luis continued designing the rain barrel support structure of the Net-Zero Bathroom. He previously ran a FE Analysis on two different unistruts, one with slotted fastener holes and the other with circular fastener holes on three of its sides. Continuing the comparison process, he connected additional circular hole unistruts, acting as beams, to the main circular hole unistrut columns.

He noticed the design complexity of the circular hole unistruts when trying to connect additional beams, in order for the design to work the holes must be concentric. Jose Luis instead added slotted fastener unistruts as it decreases the tolerance when installing them. After assembling the first level of the rain barrel support structure he ran a new FE Analysis to analyze the structural integrity. A factor of safety of 2.5 was used to run the analysis. This factor of safety was represented by the applied load on the beams, where the selected force was 1500 pounds and the actual load was roughly 600 pounds.

The analysis showed stress concentrations, approaching the yield strength, near the beam to beam connections. The stress was seen to radiate away from the center of the main unistrut beams. An additional beam can be installed in the center to help distribute these stresses. The analysis also showed a maximum beam deflection of 0.9538mm much lower than the maximum allowable beam deflection of 2.5mm based on its length. Next, this design will be compared to a 100% slotted hole unistrut structure to see the differences in strength and costs. The pictures below show some of this work.

Daniela Andrea Parada (Civil Engineering Student) completed her 34th week helping with the Sustainable Roadways, Walkways, and Landscaping, Earthbag Village, and the final Aquapini & Walipini website updates. This week, for the Roadways, Walkways, Gutters and Parking Lot report, Daniela transferred all comments she had made onto the document. She reviewed these comments and decided not to incorporate some based on the review of the entire report.

Daniela then made edits to the narrative based on the comments she left, this included expanding/rephrasing the narrative and moving around some sections in order for the report to flow better. Throughout the week she reviewed any new comments and responded as needed. Lastly, Daniela started to work on the development of the pond size for the water catchment report as she waited for document access to her next action item. 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 23rd week helping with the Aircrete and earthbag compression testing. This week the Compression Testing Team finalized the necessary procedures and materials needed for cylinder making day.

The team learned to apply stucco to the aircrete cylinders. With the stucco applied, the team was planning to wait until next week to see if stucco will provide any additional support for the cylinders but the application process was incorrect and missing a component, so this process will need to be redone. The team also discussed the work plan and prepared a materials list. Pictures below are related to this work.

Yuran Qin (Volunteer Web Editor) completed her 14th week helping with web design, this week focusing on the Tools and Equipment page and Rainwater Harvesting, Water Catchment, and Swale Building Open Source Hub and Portal. This week Yuran checked the content of the Water Catchment page to confirm everything matched the development Google Doc and updated all the images in the page.

She also filled in columns C, E, and F on this Materials Master tab, using the descriptions from the T&Q Live Page, checked that all the equipment codes include the “#”, and added in the missing alternating colors for the rows. She filled in columns B and G on this Tools/Equipment Master tab too. Pictures below are related to this work.

Cheng Lok Yin Leo (Sustainability Researcher) also joined the team and completed his first week of work on the Best Small and Large-scale Community Options for Sustainable Processing and Reuse of Non-recyclables research, report, and tutorial. This week Leo focused on familiarizing himself with the previous research content, identifying the useful material vs non-useful, and understanding the concepts of Waste-to-energy (WTE) solutions, such as gasification, Pyrolysis, Incinerations etc.

He then started to write the item “How It Works”, including examples of cities or towns with sustainable programs already in place. This content was mainly copied from the previous research and adjustment will be made in the following week. See below for some pictures related to this.

DUPLICABLE CITY CENTER PROGRESS – REINVENTING OUR CITIES

One Community is reinventing our cities 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:

• • • Learn about this building and it’s function: Duplicable City Center Open Source Hub

This week the core team started working with the Duplicable City Center 3D model to create the outer layer of the Living Dome with walls 12 3/8″ thickness. This week, we finished modeling the outer shell for the Living Dome and started to model the outer shell for Social Dome. The same team member also finished updates to the Cost Analysis Spreadsheet for the Sheep Barn, Chicken and Rabbits. We added the starting number of livestock with details related to age and gender and maximum number for livestock per structure too. Pictures of some of this work are below. 

Luis Manuel Dominguez (Research Engineer) completed his 39th week helping with research related to the City Center Eco-spa designs. This week Luis focused on making updates to the existing documents to incorporate accurate values. Also, progress has been made to develop head loss and heat consumption values to update the operating times and understand the true performance of the system. Pictures below are related to this work.

Frank Roland Vilcapaza Diaz (Mechanical Engineer) completed his 34th week helping, now focused on content related to the Solar Microgrid sizing. This week Frank finished double checking the different items that will be used in the City Center and started checking the energy draws for the items that will be used within the Straw Bale Village (Pod 2). The pictures below relate to this.

Aidan Geissler (Sustainability Researcher) also completed his 34th week helping, now focused on both the Most Sustainable Urinals page, in addition to finishing the Health Insurance research and page. This week Aidan begun his work on the Most Sustainable Waterless Urinal page, on which he has added an Introduction section and is proofreading and making minor formatting and content updates. He also continued to work on final revisions to the Community Health Insurance Webpage, such as additions to the Summary and Introduction of the Conclusions section. Pictures below show some of this work-in-progress.

Carlos Lillo (Engineering Technician) completed his 26th week helping with the pallet furniture designs for the Duplicable City Center guest rooms. This week was more like a trial for Carlos. This week he succeeded in exporting only the desired views for the drawings, meaning only the top, front and side views. This configuration is a lot easier because it’s in 2D instead of 3D. The last one was only in 3D and caused the program to crash a lot because of the mesh complexity. Now that Carlos can export in only 2D, it should be easy to finish this for the rest of the furniture. Pictures below are related to this work.

Xuanji Tang (Architectural Designer) completed her 22nd week working on Duplicable City Center updates, now focused on the City Center Lighting updates. This week she updated the floor plans and elevations, checked the door and window details and schedule, updated the door tags and window tags, and then continued working on the light fixture analysis on DiaLux evo. Pictures below are related to this work.

Huiya Yang (Volunteer Architectural Designer) completed her 21st week working on the Duplicable City Center architectural review and updates related to the structural code. This week Huiya worked on updating the door and window schedule. She accomplished the work of fixing the wrong size of Door 1 and Door 2, and fixing the related items in the floor plans. She also did some research on Door 14, the bathroom door and decided to pick the width of 32in, then she finished the detailed drawings of Door 14. Pictures of some of this work are below.

Yuxi Lu (Architectural Designer) also completed her 19th week working on the Duplicable City Center architectural review and updates related to the structural code. This week Yuxi went over items with the team that required attention for the door and window schedule in both CAD and sketchUp. Discussion and work summary include staircase door needs to be changed, several selected doors require size verification in CAD as they were scaled incorrectly during design, and selection of new public restroom door (proposal) and detailing it in CAD. Pictures of some of this work are below.

Raj Patel (Mechanical Engineer) completed his 10th week helping with the Duplicable City Center hub connectors design and testing. This week Raj ran simulations on the angled beam with a center ring using the 2-bracket and the 3-bracket configuration. He also ran studies on the center ring by itself to figure out how to reduce the stress concentration by using different methods of reducing these concentrated stress scenarios. Pictures below are related to this work.

Prathik Nirmal Jain (Mechanical Engineer) also completed his 5th week of work on the Duplicable City Center hub connectors design and analysis. This week Prathik studied the different loading points in the dome to find the level of the dome where the maximum load would act. The structure of the dome is capable of distributing the stress equally throughout the structure. For the structure to be stable, an equivalent thrust should act in the middle third of the structure. Pictures below show some of this work-in-progress.

HIGHEST GOOD FOOD PROGRESS – REINVENTING OUR CITIES

One Community is reinventing our cities 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:

• • • Learn about the structures: Hoop House Hub | Aquapini & Walipini Open Source Hub
    • See what we’ll be growing: Gardens & Hoop Houses | Large-scale Structures | Food Forest | TA

This week the core team clarified how Permaculture factors are ordered in terms of the duration the factor remains unchanged and the energy it would take to change the factor. We also continued to work on the Aquapini & Walipini content, specifically, integrating venting network, and ancillary benefits, as well as a new section on berms, terraces, and swales. We had conversations with Marcus from the Compression Testing Team about stucco, reimbursement, and schedule too.

Another core team member completed additional edits on the Chicken coop details through page 105. Research was conducted on standing seam roofing and this will be applied instead of delta rib. Multiple videos were reviewed covering frieze blocks, roofing outriggers, roof sheathing, standing seam roofing as well as relocating drawing paragraph descriptions before the drawings. Pictures of some of this work are below.

The core team also worked on the Permaculture Design “case study” for our planned property. This is all part of another of our members getting permaculture certified. This week’s focus was reviewing all the written details for his written certification that will also be added to our website, adding swale-planting understory plants, and other related graphics updates. These will be further updated as we solidify our location and know for sure our climate, topography, hardiness zones, etc.

Anna Cheal (Culinary Nutritionist) also completed her 11th week helping with the completion of the Transition Food Self-sufficiency Plan and related menu and meal plans. This week Anna completed 3 recipes: Rosemary Chicken and Vegetable Root Gratin, Hot & Sour Cabbage Stir Fry, Spicy Calabrese-Style Pork Ragu Pasta. All of which have been included in her 2-week menu. In addition, she’s focused on filling in gaps on rows L, M, R, and S of her menu plan along with making some revisions to existing recipes there. She is nearly done with this menu and will continue filling in final gaps. The pictures below relate to this work.

Maya Callahan (Sustainability Researcher) completed her 7th week helping with research and web design, currently focused on final review and edits to the DIY Permaculture Design staging page. This week, she checked every image on the page to ensure it was properly centered, and opened in the right tab (if applicable). She fixed any issues that were found and then moved on to check hyperlinks and their hover text, making the format of each uniform.

She also began editing the Earthbag Construction webpage based on a feedback PDF, ensuring all comments regarding corrections were in fact made on the live webpage. Maya resolved comments as she reviewed and confirmed that the content looked good, and proceeded to continue editing the hover text on the permaculture webpage. The pictures below are related to this work.

Adam Weiss (Chef) completed his 2nd week helping with the completion of the Transition Food Self-sufficiency Plan and related menu and meal plans. This week Adam checked recipes submitted by Anna and provided feedback based on ingredient use and general functionality. He also added to and organized the equipment list, suggested doing away with past copies of the equipment list, and added comments and suggestions to the master equipment list. Adam then checked over the kitchen build plans and will be submitting more comments later. The pictures below relate to this work.

HIGHEST GOOD EDUCATION PROGRESS – REINVENTING OUR CITIES

One Community is reinventing our cities 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:

• Program Overview: Education Open Source Hub
• How the components work together: How to use the Education for Life Program
  
• Lesson Plans for Life – Lesson Plans How-to
• Foundations of Outstanding Leaders, Teachers, and Communicators
• Curriculum for Life
• Teaching Strategies for Life
• Learning Tools and Toys for Life
• Evaluation and Evolution

HIGHEST GOOD SOCIETY PROGRESS – REINVENTING OUR CITIES

One Community is reinventing our cities 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:

• • • Read the Highest Good society overview: Highest Good Society
    • Learn about the model for fulfilled living and sharing: A Day in the Life
    • Learn about the 4 economic models: RBE | For-profit | Non-profit | Entrepreneurship
    • Learn about our open source community collaboration and management software: The Highest Good Network

This week the core team completed 21 hours managing One Community volunteer-work review not included above, emails, social media accounts, web development, new bug identification and bug fix integration for the Highest Good Network software, and interviewing and getting set up new volunteer team members. Pictures below show some of this.

Rachit Joshi (Software Engineer) completed his 8th week helping with the Highest Good Network software. This week Rachit worked on the final requirements for the time entries and infringements visualization as Jae suggested in the weekly meeting. The visualizations are now decoupled and used across the application. He also integrated new on-click pop up functionality for the data points on both of the visualizations and added labels for each data point, and started working on the pie chart for the time entries visualization. The pictures below relate to this work.

Irene Clare (Full Stack Developer) completed her 2nd week helping with the Highest Good Network software. This Week Irene forked the Rachit development branch to get his People Report component changes into her local development environment, designed a mockup for the People report page, got feedback and integrated it into her implementation, and then started the coding for all of it. The pictures below relate to this work.

And Gary Almes (Full Stack Developer) completed his 2nd week helping with the Highest Good Network software. This week Gary continued looking at code and database and back again trying to get comfortable with what’s there. He also started to refactor some code as a way to learn the functionality and help make it a bit more concise and easier to read. The pictures below relate to this work.

Kevin Begin (Full Stack Web Developer) also joined the team and completed his 1st week helping with the Highest Good Network software. This week Kevin made the following fixes for pull #354: field required’ errors are now only displaying AFTER a user clicks create; formErrors now used if they exist instead of hardcoded errors; ‘phone is required’ error now shows if a user fills in, then deletes the field; conditions moved to separate method; ‘var patt’ is now a const. removed duplicate definitions; and toast error ‘please fill in required fields’ now working if the user doesn’t focus any fields.

He also updated the ESLint and Prettier setup doc, as well as reviewing and approvIng pull request #355. Pictures of some of this work are below.

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