Ramah visit and project meeting

[Adam Roukema]

Hi all,

This past weekend I had a chance to visit Ramah where we'll be doing
our solar installation project. My intention was to fill in some gaps
from the several knowledge transfers that have taken place since the
project's inception. Well, those gaps are full, to say the least, and
perhaps much more...

First of all, Ramah is absolutely beautiful. I can't believe it's
taken this long to get out there being that it is just a short 2 hour
trip. On the way you pass ice caves, El Malpais, and El Moro, all of
which have incredible histories and beauty.

Kelly Isaacson and I arrived in the morning and after a brief
introduction into the day's activities, we were being given a guided
tour of the two Hogaans on the Pine Hill School grounds. There are
indeed two Hogaans, though our project will be concerned with the
newer one. The first was built with the more traditional Hogaan
construction methods, but the second utilizes several more advanced
green building techniques. The idea is to use that Hogaan as a
demonstration in green building. The walls are made from a
combination of cord wall (which looks like a cord of wood stacked
up.) The wood is from local pine trees that were utilized because
they were too thin to be used by the lumbermills and would have
otherwise gone to waste. The rest of the walls are made from straw
bail, with a thin layer of concrete based plaster on the interior and
exterior. I will be posting the myriad of pictures I took to photo
document all of these observations.

Initially, Kelly and I were going to try to map out the location and
approximate size of the trees that surrounded the Hogaan, but upon
further investigation and some helpful suggestions by Gordon Woodcock,
a solar engineer from Santa Fe, we may have found the perfect location
for our panels. In addition to this good news, it may be possible for
us to scale down our design to a more sleek, less costly system that
will work just as well if not better.

We were able to take measurments of the Hogaan that we'll use in our
heat load calculations, in addition to possibly starting a side
project that will utilize the metal roofing for rain catchment.

The bottom line is we have lots of ideas, lots of measurments, and now
lots of supportive networking that we can use to move forward with the
project. Since it is difficult to express all of this to you by way
of email, I'm going to be holding a Ramah Project Meeting on the
Wednesday after finals. Since I'm not sure about UNM building hours
at that time, lets meet at Frontier at 5:00. If this poses a
significant problem for most of you, I'll consider changing the time
but lets all try to meet then so I can get you up to speed.

Stay tuned for pictures to be posted either somehow on the google
group and/or on the website.

Adam

[Adam Roukema]

Since the professionals have inconveniently scheduled their meeting at
the same time as ours, lets meet the following day, Thursday, at the
same time and location.

Adam

[Sara Eatman]

Thank you so much to Adam, Candace, and Kelly for going out there!
Malcolm Siegel, the president of the professional chapter, was
impressed by the UNM presence. It's also really nice for the
community to see a few of us out there, either working on the project
or even just coming out to visit. This whole process is a
relationship-building project as well as an engineering project.

[laura francisco]

I was wondering who was going to the professional chapter meeting,
because I am interested in going!