Practical Highest Good – One Community Weekly Progress Update #427

This week the core team completed our 2nd-to-last review and feedback round on the Earthbag Village Construction of the Footer, Foundation, and Flooring doc. The focus was mainly on regarding strip placement of wing insulation. This tutorial is now about 99% complete behind-the-scenes.

The same team member then proceeded proofreading Sustainable Roadways, Walkways, and Landscaping tutorial, going through page 7 and posing questions for further clarification of the aggregate mix treatment for the surface asphalt layer.

Practical Highest Good ” Earthbag Village Construction of the Footer, Foundation, and Flooring Doc.

The core team additionally continued the final publishing of the Earthbag Village Dome Home Loft Engineering page. We updated the page with all the updated images, transformed the updated tables into images, and addressed some other images that had to be edited on top of the standard resizing and optimization before publishing them on the web page.

We also added the metadata on all the images. This page is done now except for the final read through and creating of a new header image.

Practical Highest Good ” Publishing of the Earthbag Village Dome Home Loft Engineering Page

The core team additionally continued double checking the Earthbag Village energy specifics for the solar microgrid design, sizing, and cost analysis. We added more specifics for the electrical demands, working more on identifying all the energy consuming components within the village. We’d say this evaluation/estimation task is now about 80% complete.

Practical Highest Good ” Double Checking the Energy Specifics for the Solar Microgrid Design

Jose Luis Flores (Mechanical Engineer) completed his 44th week helping finish the Net-zero Bathroom component of the Earthbag Village. This week Jose Luis continued his analysis of the maximum rain catchment area when an external support column is used.

He continued his analysis and first determined a geometric relationship between the distance of the external column to the outer structure wall and the height of the column. This was feasible due to the slope of the roof being constant, making the height and length proportional.

A constraint was then made by stating that the center of gravity or half the length of the radial beam would not surpass 80% of the distance from the origin to the column to avoid tipping. Jose Luis then made a free body diagram and equations of equilibrium to have a relationship between the distance between the center of gravity and the structure’s reaction force vs the reaction force at the column.

The reaction force on the column was isolated by using the maximum distance parameter, the maximum weight the structure can withstand, and relating it to the column’s length to simplify the equation. The length of the radial beam can be calculated by using the chosen length of the column.

With the length the reaction force can be verified by using the buckling equation and the equation derived from the spreadsheet relating weight to radial beam length. These findings will be added to another spreadsheet to calculate the maximum rain catchment area of the Net-Zero Bathroom’s exterior roof. The pictures below show some of this work.

Analysis of the Maximum Rain Catchment Area When an External Support Column Is Used

Stacey Maillet (Graphic Designer) completed her 40th week working on the final edits and revisions to the Murphy bed instructions. This week Stacy focused on making changes to part w31a and w31b by changing the board and reworking the cutting map to fit those parts in. She added more cutting instructions for all boards in the wall section and the measurements for all boards split into two pieces.

Stacey also updated the board color coding system and the procurement list based on these changes. The new added wood to the structure is making the structure more secure and sound. Screenshots below are related to this latest progress.

Practical Highest Good ” Working on the Final Edits and Revisions to the Murphy Bed Instructions

Hannah Copeman (Structural Engineer) completed her 38th 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 went through the FFF doc to resolve any outstanding comments and updated/added content for topics that needed further elaboration, such as how to calculate the width increase between the foundation and footer by using a trigonometric principle. Hannah also researched the compressive strength of aircrete in relation to its variable density.

You can see some pictures of this work below.

Practical Highest Good ” Footer, Foundation and Flooring Tutorial – Click for Earthbag Village

Vicente J Subiela (Project Management Adviser) completed his 19th week working on the solar microgrid design, sizing, and cost analysis specifics. This past week, Vicente focused on the supervision of Jeson and Luis’ tasks, reviewing draft reports, indicating suggestions to improve the texts and solving questions.

He completed the revision of the solar hardware and solar rates reports. Vicente additionally updated the solar schedule plan to have a one year view, and started to supervise and review the work by Katherine, a new member of the team.

Practical Highest Good ” Solar Microgrid Design, Sizing, and Cost Analysis Specifics ” Click for Page

Jeson Hu (Aerospace Engineer) completed his 13th week helping with research related to the solar microgrid design, sizing, and cost analysis specifics. This week, Jeson created and started developing the diesel generator spreadsheet. He determined the necessary data to be included in the spreadsheet and used the same format as the previous spreadsheets.

Other than starting the diesel generator product research, he primarily focused on responding to the comments input from other reviewers. He added more information on sections that were too short and reconstructed the recycling section with more detail. Jeson also fixed some format errors and added appendix and resource sections with backup resource web page PDFs.

The pictures below share some of this developing work.

Practical Highest Good ” Developing the Diesel Generator Spreadsheet – Click for Solar Energy Page

Dan Alleck (Designer and Illustrator) continued helping with 3D render work, completing his 4th week as a volunteer now helping with the Earthbag Village 4-dome cluster renders. This week he finished the final sky, plant, and people edits needed to complete the render shown below.

Practical Highest Good ” Sky, Plant, and People Edits of the Earthbag Village 4-dome Cluster Renders

And Katherine Cao (Chemical Engineer) joined the team and completed her 1st week working on the grid-tie connection details for our solar microgrid designs. This week Katherine reviewed the solar reports written by other One Community team members to learn about the work already done and the format desired.

She then began the research on grid-tie systems, PV field connect-to-grid, etc. and started writing the report. Pictures below are related to this work.

Practical Highest Good ” Grid-tie Connection Details for Our Solar Microgrid Designs – Click for Page

This week Ksenia Akimov (Plumbing Engineer) completed her 31st week working on the Duplicable City Center plumbing designs. This week Ksenia calculated the hot water flow rate for the kitchen according to the Guidelines for Sizing Water Heaters, California Conference of Directors of Environmental Health.

Her results showed a need for 2 working heaters of 268 gallons per hour each. This seems high for the kitchen and will need to be double checked. Pictures below are related to this work.

Practical Highest Good ” Hot Water Flow Rate for the Kitchen – Click for Duplicable City Center

David Na (Project Management Adviser/Engineer) completed his 14th 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. David began the week by emailing action items for his team.

The roadway, walkways, landscaping, and rigid and flexible pavement design is nearing completion; and so this week David was working on finishing remaining sections, reviewing formatting and comments, and making sure that the document is ready and prepared in the “End State” format that Jae is looking for.

Because this document and project tutorial takes priority, the greywater processing pond research has been put on hold until it is complete. Pictures below are related to this work.

Practical Highest Good ” Management of the Parking Lot and Sustainable Roadways Development

Sunitha Paraselli (Mechanical Design Engineer) completed her 12th week working on the Duplicable City Center connectors we’ll use to build the domes. This week Sunitha worked on different materials; Aluminum, Stainless Steel, and Galvanized Steel. Because of the cracking of the coating near the bend we cannot consider galvanized steel.

She prepared the parts from scratch and analyzed them on Aluminum and steel and compared with Galvanized steel. Aluminum is less strong than stainless steel and so stainless steel has been chosen as the preferred material. The pictures below relate to this work.

Practical Highest Good, Worked on Different Materials; Aluminum, Stainless Steel, & Galvanized Steel

Luis Manuel Dominguez (Research Engineer) also completed his 11th week helping with research related to the City Center Eco-spa designs. This week Luis made some design selections for the One Community City Center Hot Tub. With the heater selection finalized, the pump selection began.

This meant scouring websites for recommendations and sizing to understand what our system required. The pump for the unit cannot exceed the performance of the heater, but must also provide adequate flow. The flow rate numbers are only an estimate for the plumbing requirements, but he will work on those in the near future.

As of right now, the main task is to understand the power requirements of the system by finding potential compatible parts. Pictures below are related to this work.

Practical Highest Good ” Made Some Design Selections for the One Community City Center Hot Tub

Daniela Andrea Parada (Civil Engineering Student) completed her 9th week helping with the Sustainable Roadways, Walkways, and Landscaping tutorial development. As the team is wrapping up the report, Daniela edited the formatting for each section in order to ensure uniformity throughout its entirety.

Once completed, Daniela then worked on a section regarding Porous Asphalt Design. Since this section was primarily composed of images containing condensed information, Daniela converted this content into paragraph form. Additionally, subsections were reorganized for better transitions and easier understanding.

Final editing for this section will be completed in the upcoming week. Pictures of some of this work are below.

Practical Highest Good ” Edited the Formatting for Each Section in Order to Ensure Uniformity

Rushabh Bhavsar (Mechanical Design Engineer) completed his 6th week helping with the City Center Eco-spa designs. Rushabh proposed and designed an idea to incorporate the standard cover and thermal blanket with an option to open only a quarter of the spa area in case only one or two people are using the spa to save energy.

He also worked along with Luis selecting the heater, searching for the sizing chart and a suitable model for the heater. Pictures below relate to his work last week.

Practical Highest Good ” Continued Helping With the City Center Eco-spa Designs – Click for Page

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