Meetings 3.4.2014 & 7.4.2014

Hello!

We've had two meetings after the Mid-review and our final goals are finally starting to take shape. We have divided our group to two, the first focusing on water solutions and the other on biogas production and composting. We think that this division will help us to concentrate to what we want to provide to the Rock Village and also utilize our individual strengths to the fullest. Me and Axel are in the biogas group and Konrad, Ville and Vesa are in the water group. Sasha will do the visualization of our work and also provide some down to earth opinions and facts to us engineers. He is also interested in providing some points on how to establish a working communication plan for the future of Rock Village. As Konrad wrote last time we're going to focus on simple solutions that are easily realized in the first phase of Rock Village.

The water group is focusing on grey water usage, rain water collection and irrigation of the gardens and the trees. Ville has found some good articles about ecological villages and will look more deeply into them. The big questions now are how big the gardens are going to be and if the grey water can be used for the irrigation unfiltered. The biogas group is going to make calculations of the methane production potential and do some research on the composting. Both groups should meet and/or talk individually and try to finalize their goals. After that we can start distributing the work for the final report/presentation.

Last Monday (7.4) we started to talk about the final form of our work. We all agreed that a written report is necessary but we also want to create something more tangible and practical for people that do not have engineering backgrounds. Our idea is to do benchmarking for our solutions, produce computer-aided design (CAD) drawings and simple sketches of our solutions, and make something like a helpful guide booklet. We also want be as open as possible so we will explain why we have discarded some solutions, such as wind and solar power (they are not feasible for the first phase). We hope that these measures will help to bring our work to a more understandable form.

We are going to meet on next Monday and hopefully everyone will be present then. On Monday from 11.10-12.00 there is also a project clinic where we will be interviewed by the organizers of the course. Vesa, Sasha and I have told that we're going to be there but I hope everyone else finds the time for the clinic.

See you on Monday!
Sakari

Mid-review and our revised goals

Hello everyone,

The Mid-review presentation went okay but not great in any sense. We were only 3 guys (Ville, Sakari and Konrad) plus Aino present. We fortunately had some time to discuss both before and after the actual presentation-session and we decided that we need to take some action now. It is not important that we immediately start producing text for our final report but we definitely need to come up with a clear focus and decide on what our final goal with the project will be. This is why we decided to have a bunch of meetings in the upcoming 2 weeks. On Monday the 14^th we will need to present our final scope to Matleena and Olli so it is crucial that we could have as many meetings as possible before this. The meeting times are discussed in the mails sent to the participants.

All of us present on Monday got something out of seeing the other groups’ presentations and we already discussed changing our scope in accordance with what we learned. The main change would be to get rid of all high-flying ideas and focus on one or a few simple, achievable and cheap solutions that easily could be applied on a small scale and then expanded when necessary. What we have discussed so far is rainwater-collection both from roofs and in separate structures, treatment of graywater for reuse, small-scale biogas production, composting and maybe irrigation systems.

Rainwater collection from roofs is a very simple but also useful solution. As it would be integrated to the buildings themselves it is a good example of a phase 1 solution for us that is as applicable to one unit as it would be to the whole Rock Village. Reuse of graywater requires the use of certain hygienic products free of toxins etc. and some sort of simple treatment but this should be easily manageable. The water collected through these two systems would most probably not cover the needs of the Rock Village, it’s gardens and tree-plantations but it could cover a significant proportion of these needs.

As long as there are some animals present at the Rock Village small scale biogas reactors would be a sustainable, cheap and simple solution to produce gas for cooking. A larger system would require many inhabitants so we feel that we should focus on a small scale alternative and be happy about the fact that a small portion of the energy needs could be covered. The digested manure could be used as fertilizer but in addition to this a composting station would be a very simple and cheap way to produce better quality fertilizer for the gardens and agriculture. All of the ideas mentioned above are connected to gardening and agriculture and could therefore be presented as a system.

Concentrating on these kinds of simple solutions means that our plans have a much greater chance of getting implemented in the Rock Village and we should have the professional expertise to make the sufficient planning steps. If we want to focus on making the Rock Village a model for the surrounding farmers and villagers these easily applicable solutions are a much better idea then something technical and expensive such as wind- or solar-power. 

Our next meeting is set for Thursday 3.4, 11.00 at Kaisatalo. Hope as many as possible of you can make it. If it looks like you’ll have a problem making it to the 3 meetings we’ve planned and discussed in the mails then please have a look at the Doodle and suggest one for yourself!

Have a pleasant day,

Konrad