B&E is Fun For Me!

So, a while ago, Randy decided that he needed to get into his site so that he could survey the inside and take some photographs for his project. I know it sounds like a simple goal, but there were two big problems with his plan: a great piranese and a mutt. There were two guard dogs in the way, and so Randy had to enlist my help in distracting the dogs while he ran inside.


Just in the interest of scale, Randy is holding a treat out at WAIST level and the dog is bending DOWN to reach it... This is my favourite picture of the whole escapade. I was feeding them both canned dog food off of a giant metal spoon. I was kind of worried, because it was just about absolute zero outside and I thought their tongues might get stuck to the spoon, or to the fence. I would have felt like a jackass, and the dogs would most likely have retreated to the building Randy was sneaking into, which could have turned out pretty terribly.

However, the whole thing went off without a hitch. Randy got his pictures, I got a cool story, the dogs got a big meal they otherwise wouldn't have had, and now one was incarcerated.

(Borrowed)Research

I was pretty interested to find that the ED1's were doing their solar cooker assignment outside the Russell Building a little while ago. I remember doing the solar cooker assignment, but I hadn't really thought too much about it since. I decided that since I was going to need something to cook food and possibly boil rainwater to drink, that a solar cooker is certainly a good thing to be thinking about.

I think the designs are interesting, especially the umbrella one pictured here. The problem that I found with this particular crop of cookers is that not very many of them have any kind of insulation. Getting the sun to be focused on your cooker is only half the battle in this case, I think. The other, even more important thing to consider is insulation, and it seems like most of these designs are without it. A pane of glass has an R value equivalent to a sheet of printer paper, which is nothing at all, really. If you can keep the heat in and let the sun keep adding to it, I think that the solar cooker can really be a valuable tool, and it doesn't just have to cook food, it could also heat water or some other kind of thermal mass so that it can radiate out later on and contribute to the internal comfort of a building.

Drawings!

Since I've chosen my site already, I've decided that I might as well start making a few drawings. Initially, my intention was to go inside the building and use the existing infrastructure to support my own replacement infrastructure until I could move completely off the grid and live in there without relying on anything but what the building provided. I think this was spurred on by my desire to use sterling engines place on hot water pipes as an initial source of free power. After speaking with Patrick, we decided that this wasn't the best way to go about attacking my problem, and that creating a building using only the outside layer of another building was more interesting.

Since I decided to move in a new direction, I had to start mapping out the exterior of the building, using the previous drawing.



Here, I've started to dimension the building so that I can draft it and get it laser cut. I initially only intended on only modeling three floors and working on them by connecting floors together using the infrastructure I created. Using this method, I would decide where I was going to place the floors on a smaller scale reproduction of the building, but since I changed my approach, I had to change my method of modeling.

What I'm doing now is modeling the entire Facade, as well as the roof of the building in order to be able to latch on to it and start spreading across the building.

In order to latch on, though, I had to think about connecting to the building, and this is where I set a constraint for myself. I don't want to puncture the building with a drill or do anything that will harm the goings on inside the building. Rather than being a parasite on the building, I'd like to be in a symbiotic relationship with it. If, by latching on to the building I can also help it in some way operate better, then I'll do it. If that connection will adversely affect the occupants in some way, then I can't do it and I'll have to find another way. I just think this will make it more interesting, and will force me to consider the rammifications of what I'm doing to the building in a deeper way.
This is the first connection I drew up, and it's kind of interesting. Basically, it's a wrap around on the lintels of the building. if I can latch on to the lintels, I can create a plank to walk on or stick out poles or other surfaces to attach to. It wouldn't hurt the building, either, so it would be OK to do, in my book.

This is my favourite connection, due to its craziness. Basically, it's for sticking in between the channels that run down either side of the front facade. The idea is that you would take a steel pipe, insert a metal plug, a nail, and something to hold the nail straight. Then, on the other side, you'd pour water in, then add another plug, nail, and stabilizer on top of the water. You could then stick the pipe in the channel and let the water inside freeze. When water freezes, it expands, and since it can only expand in two directions, it'll force the nails into the brick, making a solid connection that you could hook around.

Patrick said it was strange... and if by strange he meant awesome, then I agree.

Thinking Outside the (Power)Box

So, I've been doing even more research into sustainable (what?) technologies. I really enjoy learning about these kinds of things, I have to say. I don't know what exactly it is that draws me to it, but I just love imagining new kinds of technology and applications for these things. The stranger, the better, I say.

Obviously, the first place I started looking for alternative energy sources was photovoltaics. I'm not really a fan of solar panels to be truthful, I think that they use a lot more energy to create than they need to, and the fact that they wear down over time is a huge downside for me. Nonetheless, it's a very established energy source, and it certainly warrants investigation if you want to generate electricity.

The most interesting book I found was called "Off the Grid Homes", and the nicest thing about it is that it was published in 2007. The houses are beautiful, and the systems are recent, and the solutions seem pretty ingenious at times, but I always notice a few key things about these houses that bother me a bit.

The houses are always in rural areas, in order to take maximum advantage of the sun. The climates they're placed in are almost always very temperate, or very hot, never in conditions that swing like the conditions in Winnipeg. The other thing, which is strange considering the name of the book, is that all of the houses have backup systems that will put them back on the grid in case the occupants overload the system.

What if you have no redundancies? What if you can't relocate to a rural area? What if you live in a climate like Winnipeg? Everyone seems to want to explore sustainability, but no one seems to want to push the boundaries and come up with solutions for less than optimal climates. No one wants to do without, either, which is a problem to be reckoned with, because at some point, people are going to have to give up a few things to do their part.