Ramah Project Meeting

[Adam Roukema]

Hi all,

On Wednesday, April 14, we held a Ramah project meeting. A quick
thanks to those who showed their support by being present and
contributing.

For those of you who are interested in the project but either could
not make the meeting and/or are not sure how to help, here is a brief
summary of the meeting and the tasks at hand:

This project has been in the works since the inception of the EWB-UNM
club. We're planning to install a solar thermal system at a Hogaan in
Ramah, NM in order to help the community members use the building year
round.

What needs to be done:

First, we need to reestablish contact with Maylee who is currently our
contact in the community but is rarely available for consultation. We
need to find another way to contact them for and/all our questions.
One idea is communicating with Maylee or someone else who can make
decisions through the school.

Once we reestablish firm contact with the community, we'll endeavor to
plan out the relative expendatures of each group, ie. will the
community be financially involved? Will they help with the
construction? How much of the overall project will come from us and
how much from them?

We also need to figure out just exactly what
'district'/'municipality'/'etc.' we are dealing with (currently we're
still unsure whether the Hogaan is on privately owned land and/or is a
part of the reservation) so we can know if there will be any leagal/
political obstacles to consider.

While this 'community outreach' is happening, we'll need to be
simultaneously working with the professional chapter members on our
design and materials. Jeremy Sment will be taking another look at the
Solar panels available to us from the ME department because we all
feel like we havent given them a fair chance. At the same time, he'll
be researching alternatives, in concert with the professionals, in the
case that the panels really can collect nothing but dust.

I, Adam, will be reviewing the thermal heat load calculations that
were used in the thesis that was written for this project. We need to
know exactly how the design will work, so that when we do a site visit
we'll know exactly what measurements are needed etc. Also, I'll be
contacting Jim Asperger to get the radiator as promised.

Finally, Candace Baca will be visiting the ECE dept. to investigate
the possibility of using some power from the existing PV panels that
were installed as an ECE senior design project. We plan to find the
blueprints for this project and gather any information that may be
pertinent to our project.

To learn more about this project, feel free to email me at
amek...@gmail.com and come to the general meeting on Wed. April 28th
at 5:30. Meeting location TBA



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[Jeremy Sment]

Hey Adam,

Are you going to be able to drive to Ramah tomorrow.  Can I go with you?  I promise I won't tell boring stories on the ride.  But really, can you call me cuz I gotta finagle to make me a part of the scenario depicted above.  505-506-8006