It seems it is time (past time!) for sustainable civilization creation. An open source and replicable DIY tool set is being created to achieve this. It includes the tutorials and resources necessary to build and maintain sustainable food, energy, housing, education, for-profit and non-profit economic design, social architecture, fulfilled living, global stewardship practices, and more. One Community calls combining all these into teacher/demonstration hubs as living and creating for “The Highest Good of All“.
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 14th, 2021 edition (#412) of our weekly progress update detailing our team’s development and accomplishments:
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One Community is demonstrating sustainable civilization creation 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 continued review and development of the Earthbag Village Footer, Foundation, and Flooring tutorials. This week we researched and revised the positioning of the sheet metal covering of the rockwool insulation in the aircrete domes so there was additional overlap with each 8″x12″ for securement with the tapcon screws. Pictures below show some of this work.
The core team also started the editing and creation process of the Earthbag Village “Earth-Dome Loft Structural Engineering and Calculations” page. This week we created the indexes, the anchor links, and formatted the text. The pictures below share some of this developing work.
Dean Scholz (Architectural Designer) continued helping with the Earthbag Village (Pod 1) 4-dome cluster designs. This week was week #213 of Dean’s work and the focus was modeling the cushions under the South window and around the East sitting area.
Jose Luis Flores (Mechanical Engineer) completed his 30th week helping finish the Net-zero Bathroom component of the Earthbag Village. This week Jose Luis continued on developing plans and ideas for the prevention of frozen pipes and structure insulation. He began by brainstorming and researching materials and devices that could be used to seal off the hole in the roof from the water storage room. His first idea involved constructing a plunger-like seal made of durable and flexible elastomeric insulation that could be lifted by a screw and installed on the roof grate.
The problem with the device was that it would have restricted rain flow into the water barrels and possibly causing secondary failures on the roof. He then began working on a device that would still allow rain water flow, but eliminate convection cooling from the exposed hole. After doing more research Jose began rendering the device on Solid Works. He decided to attach a take off collar on the ceiling aligning concentric with the hole and having another one attached to the barrel inlet over its filter. To ensure a proper seal a circular strip of elastomeric insulation was used to help seal the collar on the sloped ceiling.
The collars outlet on the ceiling was wrapped with a layer of insulation and secured with a hose clamp. The insulation only scaled a bit more than half the distance between the barrel and the hole. From there another piece of insulation was wrapped around the collar attached to the barrel and the hanging insulation. The insulation was secured with a hose clamp to the ceiling insulation duct. The hose clamp is used for a secure fit and an easy removal with a cordless drill to allow easy access to the barrel filter. The pictures below show some of this work.
Stacey Maillet (Graphic Designer) completed her 27th week working on the final edits and revisions to the Murphy bed instructions. This week Stacey finished up the Benches & Table group and submitted the PDF for review. She incorporated many of the past comments as she finished this. Stacey also focused on recounting the screws and hardware numbers to double check for use on the procurement list that still needs to be finished. The last bits of the wall section that need to be finished are the wood cutting layouts. Screenshots below are related to this latest progress.
Hannah Copeman (Structural Engineer) completed her 25th week helping complete all the Earthbag Village tutorials. This week Hannah continued the development of the Earthbag Village dome construction by continuing work on the Footer, Foundation and Flooring tutorial. She continued research on the interior trimming product, updated previous drawings in the FFF document to reflect updated changes, and completed the first three sections (5.1, 5.2 and 5.3) in the Foundation Construction section of the FFF document. You can see some pictures of this work below.
Mark Wambua (Civil Engineer) completed his 5th week working on the Parking Lot and Sustainable Roadways, Walkways, and Landscaping guides. This week mark worked on converting his research on irrigation, water catchment, and temporary parking into a tutorial. This was done in order to make it easier so a non industry consumer would be able to follow steps into creating the necessary sustainable and eco friendly home amenities. The temporary parking lot tutorial should be finished within the next week. Pictures below show some of this work-in-progress.
Zhiheng “Samson” Su (Civil Engineer) also completed his 5th week on the team and woking on the Parking Lot and Sustainable Roadways, Walkways, and Landscaping guides. This week Samson finished the chapter “General Aspect of Pavement Engineering.” He also finished simplifying the chapters, “General Aspects of Pavement Engineering” and “Pavement Engineering Consideration” and submitted them for initial review.
He additionally started to review the new chapter “Rigid Pavement Design,” finished the outline of this chapter and finished the explanation for different types of Rigid Pavement by showing the usage, advantage, and disadvantage of them. He introduced engineering properties and performance factors with the pictures of the table too. He also introduced different types of concrete, including PCC, RSC, and RCC. See pictures below.
Vicente J Subiela (Project Management Adviser) completed his 4th week working on the solar microgrid design, sizing, and cost analysis specifics. This week Vicente reviewed and improved the solar sizing spreadsheet tool, namely the calculation of inter row spacing to avoid self-shading for flat and sloping ground.
This was needed to better estimate the total space requirements. Additionally, specific cells have been colored for a better understanding and use of the tool, and new links were added for additional support / consultation, as well as other software and rates information. He also explored improvement for water heating and reviewed the pictures about the location of facilities. Pictures below show some of this work.
Sai Kaushik Duvvuru (Masters in Electrical Engineering) completed his 2nd week helping with the solar microgrid design, sizing, and cost analysis specifics. This week Sai worked on calculating energy demands for the City Center, researching optimal solar panel placements, checking the values for the outcomes, and doing general research for solar panel distribution on empty land. Pictures below are related to this work.
Aidan Geissler (Sustainability Researcher) also joined the team and completed his first week helping with 2nd-to-final review, feedback, and content editing. This week he completed the On-boarding Checklists, and then dove into developing the Most Sustainable Flooring Materials web page on WordPress by editing content, fixing formatting issues, and correcting hyperlinks. Pictures below show some of this work.
One Community is demonstrating sustainable civilization creation 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 the core team finalized the specifics of which walls will be insulated and how for the Duplicable City Center. We then created a graphic showing these details and added it to the City Center HVAC page.
This week Ksenia Akimov (Plumbing Engineer) completed her 20th week working on the Duplicable City Center plumbing designs. This week she reviewed the Uponor radiant floor designs, continued research for hydraulic calculations, finalized the boiler for radiant floor, and worked on trying to find what code requires for placing water and sanitation lines above food storage. Pictures below show some of this work.
Qiuheng Xu (Landscape Designer) completed her 19th week helping with the Duplicable City Center, now focused solely on the landscaping design. Qiuheng continued working on the planting design concept and details. She focused on developing the ground texture including understory plants, ground layer plans, and paving materials, getting ready for the walkthrough video. Below are some images showing her work.
Ian Oliver Malinay (Energy Modeler/Analyst) completed his 10th week helping run the energy analysis calculations to help us achieve LEED Platinum status for the Duplicable City Center. This week Ian processed the insulation / energy efficiency related material into designbuilder as per design requirement and recommendation. He updated the details of the following into the DesignBuilder: Roof R-value, Ceiling insulation, Roof solar absorptance, Ceiling layer by layer details, & Roof layer by layer details.
Ian checked all the material that is required to be updated based on the proposed building process. He changed the material of the dormer sill because DesignBuilder automatically set the material for it. Ian also changed the floor slab of the second floor (exposed) same with the 2nd floor slab inside the dome. Pictures below are related to this work.
Haozhen “Andrew” He (Civil Design Engineer) completed his 6th week as a member of the team helping with the City Center Water Catchment Designs. This week Haozhen fixed the problem “Gutter Conflicts with the Pivot Door” by using the Gutter Hangers to avoid the conflicts created by the original design.
During Haozhen’s AutoCAD work, he found and fixed the bug that caused the conversion from SAP2000 to AutoCAD drawing that some of the 3D models of the drawing are missing. Haozhen fixed that by recreating the 3D models which are missing. Haozhen also starts working on the downspout CAD drawing implementation. Pictures of some of this work are below.
David Na (Project Management Adviser/Engineer) joined the team and completed his 1st 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 completed orientation and set up and scheduled meetings with his team to get acquainted with them and their projects.
Long-term collaborator Bahy Ahmed (Architect) also continued modeling the specifics for how the Duplicable City Center dormer windows will be attached to the domes. This week’s focus was on the front view shown below.
One Community is demonstrating sustainable civilization creation 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 working on the Herbal Garden design for behind the Duplicable City Center. We designed additional garden beds for the Herbal Garden. We also updated all 2D beds to 3D beds, added textures to the garden beds, and generated render images. The pictures below are related to this work.
Jiayu Liang (Landscape Designer) completed her 20th week helping with the Aquapini & Walipini internal and external landscaping details. This week, Jiayu addressed all the feedback for the Walipini 1, Walipini 2, and Aquapini 1, plus outdoor space. Pictures below show some of her changes.
Henry Vennard (Mechanical Engineer) completed his 19th week helping continue the development of the climate batteries for the Aquapini/Walipini structures. This week Henry met with Mayur and discussed the code and decided we can get all the information we need from a less comprehensive model than we were working on before; paving the way for faster results. Pictures below show some of the research and code related to this.
Mayur Rajput (Mechanical Engineer) also completed his 4th week working on the Aquapini/Walipini structures. Mayur worked on determining the heat transfer in the climate battery, how the excess energy is being stored underground during summer and later utilized in winter. He considered the underground temperature at 13 feet to be constant at 6°C / 43 °F and considered the temperatures for our location. Based on this, he calculated the performance of the system and found out the output temperatures of the system.
The burial depth code seems to be not giving proper results and it can be determined with the same code used for heat transfer calculations as well. So he will try to use that moving forward and the same code can also be used to determine the component dimensions for the system. Mayur met his teammate and discussed the performance of the system. He will continue working on determining how the energy is stored and utilized later and how it improves the performance of the system. The pictures below represent his work on all of the above.
One Community is demonstrating sustainable civilization creation 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 demonstrating sustainable civilization creation 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:
his week the core team completed 25 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 core team additionally completed our 9th week working on improving the content for all our Values Pages. This week we took a deep dive into the Fulfilled Living content. We began the process of reducing passive voice and also making sentences shorter and easier to read. The section has been edited substantially with the goal of the significance of this value called out more clearly. Check out the pictures below as examples of this work-in-progress.
Wen Zhang (Software Engineer) completed her 37th week as a volunteer working on the Highest Good Network software. This week Wen worked on several fixes and updates to clearing name fields after submit, handling requests with only first name or last name, fixing an unhandled rejection error 404 bug, and handling requests that input name after assigning badges. She also updated the text of the alerts based on feedback. The assign function was wrapped up, and PR was updated too. Pictures below are related to this work.
TEKtalent Inc.(a custom programming solutions company) also continued with their 33rd week helping with the Highest Good Network software. This week Nithesh and the TEK Talent team were working on the code review comments and the suggestions in the user profile area. They also identified the root cause of the ’email not sending’ bug. The status of the user and “paused-until date” if the user is currently in an inactive state will also now be displayed in the user profile. Pictures below show this work.
Noor Qureshi (Insurance Researcher) completed her 26th week helping research One Community’s insurance options. This week Noor worked on editing the rest of the work. She expanded on the different types of group plans. Noor also added content to the different individual insurance plans. Following that, she elaborated on how she compared the different insurance plans between companies. Pictures below show some of this work.
Chris Weilacker (Software Engineer) completed his 21st week working on the Highest Good Network software. This week, Chris tested the email sending and found a limit of 16 emails that GMail was throttling us at, in order to get around the limit he implemented a timeout that allowed one infringement email to be sent every half second until finished.
The tests to Chris’s email showed this allowed 63 infringement emails to be sent without any problems. He also updated the users on the development database to be listed as 0 weekly committed hours to prevent any further emails being sent to old test accounts, while updating the master branch of Azure to stop emails sending until we enable them to be. You can see some pictures related to this below.
Jaime Arango (Graphic Designer) also completed his 20th week helping with various graphic design work for the project, continuing this week working on the new badges for the badges section on the Dashboard of the Highest Good Network. This week Jaime finished the leader of the team badges. Pictures of the new badges are below.
Robert Pioch (Graphic Designer) completed his 10th week also helping with the new badges for the badges section on the Dashboard of the Highest Good Network. This week Robert began creating the Highest Good Education Badges. You can see pictures of the new designs and development process below.
Vy Dao (Software Developer) completed his 3rd week working on the Highest Good Network software. This week, Vy worked on reviewing multiple different Pull Requests. Some of them took a decent amount of time since he found some bugs in the Assign Badge front-end branch, and it happened due to an outdated version of the backend. He also fixed/updated the unit-test for Timelog.jsx component to bring the cover from 76.92% to 83.08%. Pictures below show some of this work.
Yueru Zhao (Software Engineer completed her 3rd week working on the Highest Good Network software. This week Yueru completed the initial person reporting page. When the user clicks the person’s name in the table listing everyone, the detailed person reporting page will show. Currently, data includes the person’s name, weekly committed hours, total committed hours, start date, blue square counts, and blue square dates. Pictures below are related to this work.
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