Building DIY Sustainable Cities – One Community Weekly Progress Update #468

Open-source building DIY sustainable cities is a way to empower people and communities. Giving people the knowledge and blueprints to build their own homes, grow their own food, and live sustainable lives that are better than the way they live now is both possible and needed. One Community is creating designs for this that cover 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 March 13th, 2022 edition (#468) of our weekly progress update detailing our team’s development and accomplishments:

Building DIY Sustainable Cities
One Community Progress Update #468

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ONE COMMUNITY WEEKLY UPDATE DETAILS

HIGHEST GOOD HOUSING PROGRESS – BUILDING DIY SUSTAINABLE CITIES

One Community is building DIY sustainable 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 the core team updated the floor plan details on the site for the Earthbag Village (Pod 1) from 72 living units to 78. We also updated our related residency and rental-revenue details. Pictures below are related to this.

The core team also added to the Compression Testing Team’s data collection sheet so the necessary details are recorded for each test. We had multiple conversations with this team, including Dr. Bai and reached out to Hajjar again (with Gabriel CCed) for questions about the stucco and fabric they use.

We also started creating a nicer table to summarize findings from the compression testing with embedded pictures using beautiful table templates, discussed results from last week with Marcus, and edited the spreadsheet for the 1-wk cure-time compression testing planned for Sunday. We additionally emailed the compression testing team with the plan for the week and had a meeting with the Hub connector team to discuss issues they are having with SolidWorks. Pictures below are related to this.

Dean Scholz (Architectural Designer) continued helping with the Earthbag Village (Pod 1) 4-dome cluster designs. This was week #242 of Dean’s work and he is now working on the actual renders. The picture below shows the newest perspective with a work-in-progress attempt at adding a sky dome and updates to the door details.

Stacey Maillet (Graphic Designer) completed her 66th week working on the final edits and revisions to the Murphy bed instructions. This week Stacey focused on replacing many of the rendered images in the instructions. The electrical pages were all updated with new 3D renders and details. The graphic elements were replaced with newer ones. The title pages from each group are getting new graphics and she is continuing to update cutting lumber pages with measurements and more details. Screenshots below are related to this latest progress.

Jose Luis Flores (Mechanical Engineer) completed his 85th week helping finish the Net-zero Bathroom component of the Earthbag Village. This week Jose Luis continued the development of the rain barrel support structure used in the Net-Zero Bathroom. He began by expanding the base of the structure to facilitate the orientation of the barrels.

A static FEA was conducted on the expanded base at an overall force of 750lbs, 150% of the rain barrel weight, applied to the slotted unistrut beams. The maximum von Mises stresses were found to be 30% of the yield strength and the maximum beam deflection was found to be 16.9% of the maximum allowable beam deflection. He then rendered the base of the top barrel and performed a static FEA. The analysis included an additional 750lbs applied on the additional base.

The maximum von Mises stresses were found to be 44% of the yield strength and the maximum beam deflection was found to be 50% of the maximum allowable beam deflection. A buckling FEA was conducted and measured a buckling factor of safety of 67.92. Based on the results there should be no failures due to yielding and buckling. The pictures below show some of this work.

Daniela Andrea Parada (Civil Engineering Student) completed her 36th week helping with the Sustainable Roadways, Walkways, and Landscaping, Earthbag Village, and the final Aquapini & Walipini website updates. This week Daniela started by editing and adding to the narrative of the water catchment off the dome homes.

New calculations were introduced in this section, and she recalculated the overall water catchment for the complete Earthbag Village based on the new values. She reviewed the edits and computed the volume for water catchment storage over the span of a year. The values calculated appeared to be too large so Daniela went over the calculations, attempting to make adjustments where needed. She plans to continue to work on this section since she now has the feedback she needs to continue.

For the Roadways, Walkways, Parking Lot and Gutters Report, Daniela created a cost analysis chart for the parking lot with the updated materials, using Autodesk to obtain measurements and researching the costs of the new materials. Lastly, Daniela reviewed comments and read through an article Tugce suggested for the roadways cost analysis. 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 24th week helping with the Aircrete and earthbag compression testing. This week the Compression Testing Team completed compression testing on the 48-hours-cured cylinders.

The team worked with Sangam to review and confirm all the necessary data needed for recording. On the day of testing, the team labeled each cylinder, weighed the cylinders, and did compression testing. The team found that the lightest and standard aircrete mixes were too soft for the compression testing apparatus to record failure accurately, but the 3 heavy mixes were successful. The Team reviewed the work plan for Sunday to compression test the 1-week-cured cylinders. Pictures below are related to this work.

Yuran Qin (Volunteer Web Editor) completed her 16th 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 properly linked tools, equipment and materials on the Footer/Foundation page.

She also fixed all the resource names for the ones backed up in the Roadways and Walkways shared folder and uploaded the missing resources. Then she finished checking and updating all the content and formatting on the Water Conservation page. Pictures below are related to this work.

DUPLICABLE CITY CENTER PROGRESS – BUILDING DIY SUSTAINABLE CITIES

One Community is building DIY sustainable 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 worked on the Duplicable City Center 3D SketchUp model of the planned dormer windows for the 1st and 2nd floors. We used SketchUp to create an  accurate framing file. You can see this below.

Luis Manuel Dominguez (Research Engineer) completed his 41st week helping with research related to the City Center Eco-spa designs. This week Luis focused on the development of the City Center Spa design with regards to the plumbing. He focused on the head loss calculation and ensuring the numbers were correct. This included doing the calculations by hand, through Google Spreadsheets, and MATLAB to verify the results. His analysis is nearly complete and will be ready for future adjustments to the finalized piping length. Pictures below are related to this work.

Xuanji Tang (Architectural Designer) completed her 24th week working on Duplicable City Center updates, now focused on the City Center Lighting updates. This week she updated the landscape plans by adding a tree legend, fire truck hammerhead turnarounds and other road details, and the natural greywater processing pond. She also revised the hallway on the second floor of the Social Dome to have more seats. Pictures below are related to this work.

Huiya Yang (Volunteer Architectural Designer) completed her 23rd week working on the Duplicable City Center architectural review and updates related to the structural code. This week, Huiya continued working on updating the window schedule. She found the Window type used for W2, W3, and W5 on the Milgard® website and accomplished the work of fixing the wrong size and material of Window 2, Window 3, and Window 5 in the window details section and on the floor plans. Pictures of some of this work are below.

Yuxi Lu (Architectural Designer) also completed her 21st week working on the Duplicable City Center architectural review and updates related to the structural code. This week Yuxi continued to select doors and focused on specialty door selection. Freezer or cooler doors and possible modular cooling walls can be more cost efficient than custom made choices.

Custom pool doors and parts, including recycled stainless steel and plexiglass, were chosen based on resistance to corrosion and appearance. Steel doors which can be broken down to varying types such as temperature rise doors, egress characteristic doors, and flush doors were suggested for installation at varying locations throughout the building. Pictures of some of this work are below.

Raj Patel (Mechanical Engineer) completed his 12th week helping with the Duplicable City Center hub connectors design and testing. This week Raj worked on increasing the gap between the beam and the center ring to check if it would reduce the stress on the brackets. This reduced the stress drastically which helps the team move forward with this design. He also looked at reducing singularities in the part to mitigate stresses. Pictures below are related to this work.

Maya Callahan (Sustainability Researcher) completed her 9th week helping with research and web design, now focused on review and edits to Shreyas’ solar microgrid design specifics related to electric vehicles. This week, she made comments on the google document when content had errors or seemed unclear. Once Maya received feedback from others editing the document, she made the appropriate changes and resolved the comments.

The page had some formatting inconsistencies such as figures being difficult to find and usage of bold. Maya also made sure figures and images were below the content where they are referenced, and rid the page of bold text replacing it with uppercase headers. Finally, she began writing a section regarding updated information on the Ford F-150 Lightning. The pictures below are related to this work.

Prathik Nirmal Jain (Mechanical Engineer) also completed his 7th week of work on the Duplicable City Center hub connectors design and analysis. This week Prathik came across a new software ” Tekla Structural Designer, which is used to design and perform analysis of a structure to understand its strength and the stability. He watched a few videos related to how to design a dome and perform structural analysis with the given load factors. Pictures below show some of this work-in-progress.

HIGHEST GOOD FOOD PROGRESS – BUILDING DIY SUSTAINABLE CITIES

One Community is building DIY sustainable 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 completed additional edits on the Chicken Coop Assembly Doc pages 117-121. These were regarding the enclosure under the roof sides and the barn door fabrication. As part of this, we found a good video to use as a guide for construction of the chick coop door. The video is meant for construction of a tabletop but it will suffice for our coop door.

A different core team also continued updating the images and text on the Chicken Coop Building instruction document based on the above suggestions and feedback.

Brian Storz (Culinary Project Manager) completed his 20th 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 came back from maternity leave and spent most of his time getting up to date with what happened for the last three weeks, and working on Anna’s menu plan. Many recipes need to be moved around in the menu plan and some of the recipes need to be modified to accommodate a large-scale kitchen operation like ours, versus a home cooking plan. Below are some images related to this.

Adam Weiss (Chef) completed his 4th week helping with the completion of the Transition Food Self-sufficiency Plan and related menu and meal plans. This week Adam first worked on the recipe conversion calculator. He added in simple equations to convert US measurements to imperial and vice versa.

He also started to learn how to create drop down menus in google sheets so he could make the calculator more streamlined and easier to use. Adam also reviewed Brian’s drawing of the kitchen layout. This made him think not only of worker use, but diner use, and led to an idea for a beverage station and also a bussing station. The pictures below relate to this work.

HIGHEST GOOD EDUCATION PROGRESS – BUILDING DIY SUSTAINABLE CITIES

One Community is building DIY sustainable 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 – BUILDING DIY SUSTAINABLE CITIES

One Community is building DIY sustainable 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 20 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.

The core team also updated all the badges in theHighest Good Network software with all of Alex’s work from the past several weeks. Pictures below are related to this.

Aidan Geissler (Sustainability Researcher) also completed his 36th week helping, now focused on both the Most Sustainable Urinals page, in addition to finishing the Health Insurance research and page. This week Aidan completed the final minor revisions to the Community Health Insurance Webpage.

He then returned to working on the Urinal, Hand Dryers, and Shower Head pages. Aidan worked on incorporating content from a spreadsheet, doing minor formatting, and proofreading and editing the content of each page. Pictures below show some of this work-in-progress.

Pranav Borole (Software Engineer) also completed his 7th week working on the Highest Good Network software. This week Pranav finished developing the code for a component that will allow us to input any city in the world for a volunteer and it will tell us their timezone. This is needed to help with coordinating calls and meetings with people around the world. Now we can easily add a person’s timezone to their profile when we set them up as a new team member. Pictures of some of this work are below.

Irene Clare (Full Stack Developer) completed her 4th week helping with the Highest Good Network software. This week Irene has continued to work on the people reports page. She pulled the recent changes for the people report page made by Rachit and worked on designing the report page with the user details and task details related to the user’s project. Irene also worked on the task table design and functionality. The pictures below relate to this work.

Kevin Begin (Full Stack Web Developer) also completed his 3rd week helping with the Highest Good Network software. This week, Kevin found 4 bugs and fixed 3. The first fix regarded the functionality of deleting and assigning badges, in addition to finding and fixing a bug he found while working on this issue. Deleted badges are no longer added when a user tries to add a badge after deleting one or more.

Badges selected and not added are no longer assigned if a user tries to assign another badge. Kevin also fixed a bug in which a new user’s weekly committed hours wouldn’t be saved and the default of 10 hours would be used in its place. Creating a new user now functions as expected. Additionally, Kevin fixed the documentation for running the app locally, and the read.me file for HGNApp that previously referenced using Yarn as a package manager. Pictures of some of this work are below.

Miguel Fernandes (Full-stack Developer) also joined the team and completed his 1st week helping with the Highest Good Network software. Miguel started the week setting up the app locally. At first he studied the codebase and had a meeting with teammates to try and understand the workflow. During the week he worked on formatting and testing files on the frontend using Prettier and ESLint (total of 276 files). Miguel pushed those changes into a new branch (miguel-codeformatting). He also tested and approved PR #367. Pictures of some of this work are below.

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