Green space in the new hack space?

[Gary Mulder]

Hi all,

I've been meaning to show up to a Tuesday night, but exceptional personal events have prevented me so far. As it happens, I work at Skybet and sit next to a certain Mr. Ranyard. Once I get my personal life sorted out I'd like to contribute to the new Hackspace.

I grow a lot of vegetables and stuff as well as being a techie, so it would be fun to build a self-monitoring green space if you have the physical space. I seem to remember someone mentioning you have some sunlight in the new hackspace and I'm sure I can make some use of it, with perhaps some assistance from some LED grow lights I already own. My initial idea was to try growing some coffee plants hydroponically and, if successful, brewing some very special Café Au Hack next year.

Regards,

Gary

[Stanto]

! Coffee !

There's natural light in the new space, certainly potential for coffee hydroponics :D

Also hello, welcome :)

[J C]

Also hops for brewing own beer?

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[Samwise Wilson]

Hello hello,

I've thought about this too but I think you will struggle for decent light for good growth!

Something to get the kit higher in the skylights might work as the outside areas are waaaaa to small for practical return!

[samson B]

depending on health and safty and landlord what about roof top garden would insolate the room and have plenty of sun ?

[Martyn]

Unfortunately the roof is off limits. The balance between the landlord having responsibility for it's upkeep far outweighed access by members.

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news.

There was talk of a suspended/wall garden thing so I'm sure as long as it doesn't block too much of our precious natural light that we paid so much to have, something can be done.

Cheers,
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Martyn
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[samson B]

no worries thort we might have had an agreement like that in place

[Tom Oldbury (Email #2)]

Could probably fit something hung over the craft area skylight. We'll have plenty of unused space vertically so it would be good to make use of it.

[samson B]

oww we could run optic cable through so it still pases light though and looks like a roof full of stars ;)

On Tue, Sep 20, 2016 at 11:13 AM, Tom Oldbury (Email #2) <told...@gmail.com> wrote:

Could probably fit something hung over the craft area skylight. We'll have plenty of unused space vertically so it would be good to make use of it.

[J C]

Would not easily object to a plan involving the phrase roof full of stars

[stethe...@googlemail.com]

On Tuesday, September 20, 2016 at 11:18:43 AM UTC+1, samson B wrote:
> oww we could run optic cable through so it still pases light though and looks like a roof full of stars ;)
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> On Tue, Sep 20, 2016 at 11:13 AM, Tom Oldbury (Email #2) <told...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Could probably fit something hung over the craft area skylight. We'll have plenty of unused space vertically so it would be good to make use of it.
>
>
>
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Just make friends with a local Drug squad next time they raid a cannabis farm get them to send a few lighting units over ;-)

[Andy51055]

Doesn't work :( When they raided our next-door neighbours' cannabis farm they wouldn't let us have any of the skipful of soil that came out of the house.

My only worry about growing stuff is if it is successful it will block most of the light which would be a Bad Thing.

[stethe...@googlemail.com]

On Tuesday, September 20, 2016 at 7:36:58 PM UTC+1, Andy51055 wrote:
> Doesn't work :( When they raided our next-door neighbours' cannabis farm they wouldn't let us have any of the skipful of soil that came out of the house.
>
> My only worry about growing stuff is if it is successful it will block most of the light which would be a Bad Thing.

I would agree Andy. I do believe i read somewhere about them donating some equipment on and naturally i was joking that stuff uses lots of juice.

[Gary Mulder]

On 20 September 2016 at 13:45, J C <jap...@gmail.com> wrote:

Would not easily object to a plan involving the phrase roof full of stars

On 20 Sep 2016 11:18 am, "samson B" <samm...@gmail.com> wrote:

oww we could run optic cable through so it still pases light though and looks like a roof full of stars ;)

The reality is in these latittudes we need artificial lighting for growing, as relying on sunlight is only good for growing in a glasshouse or for short-duration growth plants that grow during the summer. For green plants we'd need 5000K (cool white, like office fluorescents). For flowering and growing coffee beans some 2700K (warm white, typical bulbs used in your home), or alternatively special grow lights that emit at exactly the frequencies plants need. I have one 30W CFL 2700K spot light that we can start with. We could agree on a monthly power budget and build + cron job accordingly. More (light) energy = more caffeine, in simplistic terms. Ideally we'd want to be pumping 200W into the plants 18 hours a day, but that might be cost prohibitive. 

I'm not in any way a carpenter, so if there's someone who can help me mount a trellis artistically I'm fairly sure we can bend the plants into whatever space is available. What will be fun, and something I haven't done before, is rigging an automatic water circulating system using small aquarium water pumps or similar. I'd start off with a lot of manual monitoring, but if the plants take we could potentially add some semi-intelligent water monitoring and fertilisation adjustment.

I should have time to show up this Tuesday if anyone is interested in brainstorming with me.

Regards,

Gary

[Andy51055]

I shall do my best to turn up this Tuesday to storm some brains. I have several thoughts.

[Tom Oldbury (Email #1)]

If you're going to be doing grow lighting, let's please use LED lighting. Red/blue lights can be built from suitably spec'd high power LED modules and a small power supply. 

200W at 18 hours per day = 3.6kWh day or 1300kWh a year. Over £130 in electricity costs per year to run that alone. LEDs would pay for themselves within a year.

If you need any help putting something suitable together, let me know.

[J C]

I'll see you on Tuesday for the brainstorming.

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[Gary Mulder]

200W was a top-end proposal, which I was not seriously proposing due to the electricity costs, as you point out. Agreed also about the LED TCO.

Looking forward to meeting everyone this Tuesday!

Regards,

Gary

[samson B]

shame we cant have our own mini wind mill to help the idea me carbon neutral

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[Tom Oldbury (Email #1)]

Solar panels would work better (even for the UK.) Wind turbines only start becoming a better solution once you get to stupidly large blades and 100kW+ generators!

I know we don't have roof access but I'm sure if it came about that we had some "spare" solar panels and a registered contractor-y person, we could get solar panels fitted to the roof. Not something we need right now but as time goes on we may consider it to be cost effective (the payoff would have to be within 3-5 years, as our lease is not guaranteed to be much longer.)

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[J C]

Solar panels as a reason for access to the roof were bought up with the landlord who did not like the idea and we dropped it as not important from negotiations so pretty unlikely sorry. 

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[Gary Mulder]

On 23 September 2016 at 15:15, J C <jap...@gmail.com> wrote:

Solar panels as a reason for access to the roof were bought up with the landlord who did not like the idea and we dropped it as not important from negotiations so pretty unlikely sorry. 

If anyone has and old exercycle they'd care to donate... ;-)

Gary 

[Andy51055]

Someone here (possibly mikee) is planning on building one so may donate it once he's proven the concept and starts manufacturing the things.

[Tom Oldbury (Email #1)]

Your average human consumes about 100x more in food value than is useful for electricity. The amount of effort required for any real work is insane. Maybe you could power the rack, or a Sauron...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4O5voOCqAQ

[stethe...@googlemail.com]

Wind turbines don't work in built up area too much wind turbulence. B&Q fell for that a few years ago company that made them massively over estimated the production in the end B&Q sued the company and they went under.

But yeah LED can certainly do the job. One the ways of finding cannabis farms is from people by passing meters as they use so much juice.

[Gary Mulder]

On 23 September 2016 at 17:45, Tom Oldbury (Email #1) <tho...@tgohome.com> wrote:

Your average human consumes about 100x more in food value than is useful for electricity. The amount of effort required for any real work is insane. Maybe you could power the rack, or a Sauron...

Yup. "carbon neutral" is more a state of mind than a state of physics, hence my suggestion that people can if they want to try to pedal away their moral debt.

Personally, I don't drive a car and I live above someone else to reduce my winter energy costs, so my notional "carbon budget" is perhaps mostly spent on being a unrepentant omnivore. I am also originally from NZ, so I assume that my carbon footprint goes severely positive every time I visit my family back home...

Regards,

Gary

[Tom Oldbury (Email #1)]

Slightly off topic, but this is a discussion I had with a cycling friend of mine. 

He cycles a bike, but loves to eat meat (I do too). I was able to find a Guardian article which put the "emissions" of his (literally) meat-powered bicycle around twice that of my reasonably efficient (~125g of CO2 per km) small diesel car.

Here's a link: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2010/jun/08/carbon-footprint-cycling

I've not worked out if the figures are accurate, but given the overall thermodynamic efficiency of the human body (1-2% for the average person, around 5-6% for the best Tour de France cyclists) it wouldn't surprise me if there's a great deal of truth behind these numbers.

[Matt C]

Except non cyclists are still incurring the carbon costs of the food they eat in addition to the emissions from their cars

[Tom Oldbury (Email #1)]

Well, it's not as simple as that, unfortunately! A cyclist has to consume more food to power their bike as they are burning more calories. Unless your intention is to continuously lose weight to the point of starvation, eventually you will have to consume the energy to provide the energy to cycle the bike, and you will consume around 50-100x more than you provide to the pedals.  So a cyclist will (in steady-state conditions) eat more and therefore their "food emissions" will be higher than that of the sitting-on-their-ass car driver. This of course doesn't apply if you are a vegetarian. It is then quite a lot greener to cycle (depending on what you eat), but the vast majority of people still eat meat.  (But, you could also use bio-diesel to power your car, so low-carbon is possible with both means...in fact, bio-diesel is actually carbon neutral!)

You would be surprised at how efficient a car is. A similar argument applies to buses and some other forms of public transport. A large double-decker bus, such as those operated by First. typically operates at around 1-2 miles per gallon of diesel. And due to the very high compression diesel engine (very high torque due to heavy weight, and frequent stops and acceleration) the NOx emissions are much, much higher than a car.  

Unless the bus has more than about 20 people on board, your typical small (1.4L to 2.0L) turbo-diesel engine is actually more efficient. Even my 11-year old diesel Peugeot returns 45 mpg (actually measured) in city driving, so a bus needs to have 23 people or more (excluding the driver) on board to break even with my car. Most buses I see are lucky to have half that on board. 

[Matt Collins]

I would argue that most cyclists do not eat more than the average at driver!

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[Matt Collins]

They are probably just healthier

[Tom Oldbury (Email #1)]

> I would argue that most cyclists do not eat more than the average at driver!

They necessarily must. This is thermodynamics!  As they get fitter their body will become more efficient at converting food into energy, but a typical turbodiesel car engine can achieve upwards of 35-40% thermodynamic efficiency, and your average cyclist would be lucky to break 2%. The human body is incredibly inefficient! And getting food from pigs and cows (whilst delicious) is unfortunately, rather inefficient, because you need to feed them, medicate them, keep them warm or cool them down, and transport the meat. 

Cyclists are rarely fat because a) it is hard to be fat and cycle (not only is it harder to balance and propel yourself, you would have to consume an enormous amount of food to *gain* weight while cycling), and b) cyclists typically are healthier (because they care more about their physical fitness, hence why they cycle)

 > They are probably just healthier

I'm not arguing that cyclists aren't healthy. They probably are more healthy than 90% of the car driving population because cyclists tend to be in a similar group of peers.

I'm simply making the argument that being green isn't as simple as getting on your bike. Your whole lifestyle needs to change.  It's also not as simple as hopping on the bus, as I've shown car sharing with just one other person in an efficient, modern car would put your emissions on par of that with a densely-packed bus on a per-passenger-mile basis and even a driver-only car isn't as bad as it seems.

[Gary Mulder]

On 22 September 2016 at 21:33, Andy51055 <you...@51055.com> wrote:

I shall do my best to turn up this Tuesday to storm some brains. I have several thoughts.

Andy,

Seems I missed you last night. I'll have some time off during the week next week and I hear you'll be busy working on the new space. Is there a good day to come over for a visit? Tom kindly gave me a quick walk-thru last night.

Regards,

Gary 

[Andy51055]

I didn't make it last night as my throat is a bit bad at the moment and loud talking wasn't possible. For the same reason I'm avoiding the dust in new space, but I will be in for most, if not all, of Sunday.

Did anything happen last night about planning a green space?

[Gary Mulder]

On 28 September 2016 at 18:53, Andy51055 <you...@51055.com> wrote:

I didn't make it last night as my throat is a bit bad at the moment and loud talking wasn't possible. For the same reason I'm avoiding the dust in new space, but I will be in for most, if not all, of Sunday.

Did anything happen last night about planning a green space?

Sorry to hear about the throat. Paint fumes can clear sinuses, I've heard ;-)

Nothing specific was discussed, and given that any green space construction would need to be both space and budget permitting, I'd guess there won't be any solid plans until the new space is better organised into working spaces.

Might see you Sunday then.

Gary

[mikee franklin]

I'm late to the discussion, but...

I'm a big fan of a simple PVC pipe hydroponics system along one of the walls in the space. Not just for the geekery, but it think it'd both be aesthetically pleasing and be pleasing to new/potential members when they come to visit.

This is the kind of project I'd happily slightly increase my membership fee for, if it helped cover electricity costs. I wonder if some kind of Patreon system could work for people who want to get involved with group projects that have an small ongoing cost.

On Monday, 19 September 2016 18:07:18 UTC+1, Gary Mulder wrote:

Hi all,

I've been meaning to show up to a Tuesday night, but exceptional personal events have prevented me so far. As it happens, I work at Skybet and sit next to a certain Mr. Ranyard. Once I get my personal life sorted out I'd like to contribute to the new Hackspace.

I grow a lot of vegetables and stuff as well as being a techie, so it would be fun to build a self-monitoring green space if you have the physical space. I seem to remember someone mentioning you have some sunlight in the new hackspace and I'm sure I can make some use of it, with perhaps some assistance from some LED grow lights I already own. My initial idea was to try growing some coffee plants hydroponically and, if successful, brewing some very special Café Au Hack next year.

Regards,

Gary

[Gary Mulder]

On 3 October 2016 at 15:14, mikee franklin <mikeef...@gmail.com> wrote:

I'm late to the discussion, but...

I'm a big fan of a simple PVC pipe hydroponics system along one of the walls in the space. Not just for the geekery, but it think it'd both be aesthetically pleasing and be pleasing to new/potential members when they come to visit.

This is the kind of project I'd happily slightly increase my membership fee for, if it helped cover electricity costs. I wonder if some kind of Patreon system could work for people who want to get involved with group projects that have an small ongoing cost.

PVC pipe hydroponics sounds like a really good idea.  If electricity is an issue we can always carefully choose low-light plants. Having had a look at the skylights it is fairly clear they're not going to provide that much light, except at midday. Any plants would also likely grow to occlude them.

I'm out of the country for a while so can't make it to Tuesday nights currently. Brainstorming here is ideal.

Regards,

Gary