oops! needed a new thread... Very efficient agriculture!

[lisa_k]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jV9CCxdkOng&feature=player_embedded

[Snow Ranch]

 

----- Original Message -----

From: "lisa_k" <lisk...@gmail.com>

To: "Transition Lake County" <transition...@googlegroups.com>

Sent: Saturday, January 22, 2011 12:58 PM

Subject: [tlc] oops! needed a new thread... Very efficient agriculture!

> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jV9CCxdkOng&feature=player_embedded

 

 

....Thanks.  Seen it before.  Great stuff.  

 

For those interested in cheap greenhouses, Harbor Freight has some cute polycarbonate ones for about $500 some.   Or, you can make your own, sheds, and other structures by this really cool geodesic design I was introduced to awhile back.  It's from the old Octa 21 designed by a mathematician and lover of the Golden Mean Ratio.  Google:  Octa 21.   It's a much simpler geodesic dome to build than the average dome.   Only requires making 12 triangles of the same shape and hitching them up in the pattern outlined.  I studied it some awhile back for goat shelters, sheds, workshop, barn, etc....potentially larger structures.   Even outlined the cutting pattern by which you can use two, 4x8' plywood or cheaper OSB sheathing board to form the larger triangles with glued T-channel reinforcements made from the long strips shown.  Or, you can make the skeleton of PVC, 2"x2", or electrical conduit (which is cheap and more rigid).....and drape with canvas, or cheap marine shrink wrap (thicker construction shrink wrap is better), or really strong and durable is surplus billboard tarp.   If looking for clear sides for a greenhouse on a tight budget, you can always build the skeleton and wrap the thing in oodles of Saran Wrap...which will diffuse the sunlight.

 

...Build your planters of recycled pallets.   Find old propane or water tanks....or anything capable of holding water....and make into your fish tanks.....or get a backhoe, dig a pit, lay down billboard vinyl tarp, and fill the pond with water.  Dump in your fish fingerlings.  Get your worm and beetle bins going for feed.  Pump the water out with a 12VDC bilge pump, a couple old & reconditioned car batteries wired in parallel, and stick a $150 Harbor Freight solar array to it....or larger panels from www.AdvancePower.net in Calpella.  Pour the water over your pallet planter beds above.  Cover it with the cheapie greenhouses.....and whalah.   Fish and veggies for all on the least bit of land. 

 

 

 

These were arch modifications to the Octa.   What's great about these geodesics is the simplicity of design and elegant geometry.  The angles are based in PHI, and so it sits on the ground very stable against wind.  Doesn't need to be staked down where the skeleton is heavy enough (lumber) and doorways small (such as with cow hutches).  Loading is very elegantly distributed throughout the structure.  It uses the same geometry as in the Great Pyramids. 

 

 

...This one, however, deviates from the geometry considerably :-)

 

 

[Lisa Kaplan]

Great info Snow Ranch, thanks!

--
Lisa Kaplan
Education / Art / Digital Media and Design
Tel: 707-987-9095
Cell: 707-295-6663

[lonnie caldwell]

Thanks for sharing, I am actually about ready to build a small "lift-the-lid" type this may give me some good ideas.

On Sat, Jan 22, 2011 at 9:23 PM, Snow Ranch <snow-...@mchsi.com> wrote:

--

Lonnie  

Love is not what you want, it is what you are. It is very important to not get these two confused. If you think that love is what you want, you will go searching for it all over the place. If you think love is what you are, you will go sharing it all over the place. The second approach will cause you to find what the searching will never reveal. Yet you cannot give love in order to get it. Doing that is as much as saying you do not now have it. And that statement will, of course, be your reality. No, you must give love because you have it to give. In this will you experience your own possession of it.

 

 

 

[lonnie caldwell]

There is a Hot Springs near Hagerman, Idaho where they built some domes of varying size on the same principle in the largest one they have an aluminum pole structure covered with a commercially made slip-over type cover. This one is wide open and used for parties when it is too cold for outdoor picnics and the like. Be a great place to hold say a yoga class. I would estimate the capacity at around 40 comfortably, more if you packed em in!

The other domes have wooden bases with a aluminum pole superstructure and those same commercially made slip-covers. these cozy little sleeping domes that they use like hotel rooms. Kind of cool, relatively inexpensive to build and sort of a hybrid between the dome and the yurt.

I think I'm good on parking for my Leer Jet, but I may need some quick shelter for me someday soon.

On Sat, Jan 22, 2011 at 9:23 PM, Snow Ranch <snow-...@mchsi.com> wrote:

[Snow Ranch]

Hi Lonnie,

 

Yeah, I love domes.  They're just hard to make when shaped like a golf ball.  So much nicer in terms of cost and amount of materials.  Great for barns, shops, greenhouses, animal shelters, and accessory structures at least...if not for the covering issue.  You can just drape a cover over it sloppy and stake down, but that's cheesy.  It takes having a good, flat surface to work on....such as a gym or shop floor....and then covers can be made pretty easily.  These Octas, for example, only require 12 equal triangle cuts of the material....or cut as a single template.  I'd prefer the 12 individuals.  Then, if a surplus vinyl billboard tarp, you can just lay out the triangles and cut rectangular seam strips to join them.  Then put adhesive down and make it into one large cover. 

 

If using wood 2"x2".....I'd bracket up the skeleton.  Then, just attach each triangle with a nail gun at flat heads or shoot in screws while leaving overlapping seams and applying glue as you go.  Apply more seam covering as needed.  There is that marine construction shrink wrap that is nice for greenhouses -- especially if you can get it clear rather than white.   That is easily cut and glued.  Very cheap skin people use for greenhouses.  Then, when all is lightly draped over the dome, you just run over it with a rental heat gun (about $75 rather than hundreds, but worth hundreds if you're doing a lot). 

 

For animal shelters, you need a far more durable skin.  My goats would shred that stuff fully in an hour!   I have a need for smaller, portable, light-weight shelters (Instead of cleaning a barn, pick it up and move to fresh ground; the tradeoff in colder ground to lay on versus filthy straw or pine chips and extra labor/ cost there is better in favor of fresh, clean, dry ground and grass -- as their body heat will warm up the stable temperature soil anyhow;  Adding layer upon layer of pine chips to underlying compost is standard, but you're always doing that and, if not keeping up, disease starts fast.  I don't use straw anymore as animals will tend to eat that even where bedding, but pine chips they don't like.  Straw is also harder to clean out.).  OSB sheathing board is a good, durable siding for animals but makes the structure very heavy.  Rip-stop vinyl  -- particularly if cheap and easy to repair -- is very strong and will hold up even against my 300 pound bucks and their horns.   That's why I like surplus billboard vinyl.   It's super cheap.  These poly tarps (blue, white, silver) that you can buy locally or by mail are crap.  They're shredded in a year of this sun and rain.   But, the vinyl will go out to 15-20 years or so.  The ripstops are smaller and stronger.  

 

I have a sample two patches here from an aircraft hangar company that makes them for the war, for ship dry docks, for everything.....and they poked a tear in it with a knife and invite you to rip it.  Try as I may, I cannot tear it.   A tornado could, but not even the gusts out here.  Nor my buck.   You can go into this stuff with a knife and try to open a doorway in the teepee wall, but no chance.  It's that strong.  The billboard vinyl -- being thinner -- wouldn't be as strong, but it's cheap enough that you can always double up if there's a need.   I really liked these Octas, but we'll have a need for about little 72 shelters and the time required in making an Octa is too long.  Therefore, I favored just PVC pipe skeleton layout with elbows and Tees to make a rectangle base + 3 hoops for the roof + draping a rectangular sheet of vinyl over the the while thing in arch form.   That leaves better ventillation by summer and winter anyhow.   As for rain and wind shelter, rather than making doors, you just make the quansit hut style longer so the wind/ draft/ rain only impacts the edges while huddled together deeper in the tubes.....all is warm and dry.   Wind and draft is not so much an issue as just keeping them dry and having shade by summer.  The thick winter fur and huddles take care of the rest.  

 

Wanted to build a gigantic one for barn/shop....but the 50' concrete floor would have been huge and costly while I'll have too many other things to do.   It is also hard to compete with conventional clear span steel in terms of vertical walls, ease of making a 2nd story, and ability to attach a crane to the roofing.....which you can't do very well even if making these of 2x6".  The plans submitted to county would be hokey, not structural engineering stamped.  Engineered plans I could have done for it -- and am still thinking of this option -- but, all in all, I figure on the higher cost and certainty of throwing up a conventional barn.  The vinyl I had in mind is flame resistant, and so you can weld inside the structure....but I'm not keen on sparks making holes in the skin.  I suppose we could coat the inner skin with some sheet metal to protect against that.....or just patch up as needed (which wouldn't be too often)....but we'll see.  Mostly, we can't afford to be screwing around with a barn project and waiting for it.   We'll need the barn up right away, will have equipment to work on and prepare, and other operations that need our focus.  The cost and material savings doesn't justify the time and distraction from business at hand while equity gain on a conventional barn is better than some hokey thing on the field most people don't understand or appreciate.  But I do love the structures all the same for at least greenhouses.   Biggest pain in the ass is the skin.  You can't just hang it on like siding.  Takes a little more time and cutting.

 

There is something just very aesthetic about the domes that I find people and animals enjoy, however.  Seems something to do with the overall design harmony.  I had a couple test skeletons out here of the Octas built -- one large; one small.   The goats would curiously check them out, but sometimes I'd find them just standing in or sitting in the center --- like New Age hippies enjoying the "pyramid power"! :-)  I had it just quickly lashed up with baling wire.  In time, they thrashed it all like drunken rock stars in a hotel and brought the house down to partial collapse and triangles here and there.   I left it as is in curiosity to see how long it would take them to totally demolish the structure, and to see if they liked the other shapes.   Nope.   The collapsed structure had asymmetric triangles and was a really messy dome. Geometric harmony was lost.   They don't favor rectangles or cubes as much, either.  It has to do with the PHI mathematics to the structure.   Yes, definitely a "pyramid" power to it.  The pyramid -- where at PHI -- is really near perfectly in-tune with the universal structure.  They pyramid is also a perfect inductor.  Vortex patterns, the curling of the DNA helix, the Fibonnaci sequence, the nautilus sea shell, the vortex swirl of galaxies, the pentagon & dodeca, explosion, implosion, and so many things in nature....all are optimum in the Golden Mean Ratio.  Even how light will be refracted, interior reflected, and bounced around inside the structure as a greenhouse.....I think you will find that crops grow better and IR loss/ heat preservation works out best in these Octa structures over that of similar-sized rectangles and quansit styles. 

 

There is another structure I considered for animal shelters which is far simpler to construct and mathematically strong in its own way.  I'll have to look it up if any are intersted and forget the name, but it is based in the "hyperbolic parabloid".  Google that and search for some YouTube vids.  There was an engineer with the U.N. who was charged with relocation of oodles of Africans or Latin Americans due to some dam project.  They needed lots of shelters, fast, and cheap.  So, he decided to make the roofs first, and then people could raise the roof and add walls over time.  They used a mix of fiberglass screendoor material + latex paint / cement over the roof skin.   The roof is made of just a square frame at the bottom and then just four uprights to an apex....with those uprights starting at the center of each plank, not as pyramid edges, but through the center face of the pyramid.  This results in a kind of warped pyramid skin that is very strong in tension.   I have tested some square foot patches of the stuff and like it.  Compared it to how you'd normally prepare stucco.   Compared it to fiberglass & polyester resin impregnated cellulose board ("cardboard" box material with the corrugations crosshatched).  Compared it to a square foot of papercrete.  Compared it to reinforced straw/ plaster.  Compared to canvas and treated canvas.   Overall, it's very durable stuff....but you have to take time and put on multiple coats. 

 

For those who like natural materials and all, you get the stucco feel and look with the latex in there to help keep things flexible.  But, if you need things fast and workable with less screw around time and cost for agricultural ops....it's hard to beat surplus billboard vinyl.   And billboard vinyl is fun.  You never know what you'll get.  Frontside it white or black. Underside of your structures will have cigarette ads, political ads, Pepsi ads, and generally scantly clad women (as sex, sex, sex is what sells, sells, sells in our society!).  With 72 shelters to make, I know at least one of the goat shacks will be for me kinda like a teenage boy again plastering supermodels and pinups on the wall!  :-)   This time in covering a tractor or for goats.   Perhaps, if we induct some sunlight into an Octa shelter while that light radiates through mass media sex, sex, sex advertising....the overall vibes beamed into and concentrated as "pyramid power" with the animals will favor further rampant debauchery and better breeding rates?   Of course, I may walk out one day to find a bunch of exhausted goats sprawled on the floor, drunken in liquor and Dos Equis Man life, and puffing on Marlboro or Virginia Slims smokes.  "Baaaaah!!!!   My pastured harem and adventures are extensive and I am the most interesting buck in the world.  Live life richly, my fellow goats!" or "Baaaaaah!!!! We've come a long way, Baby!" they'll say.   Cheesburger wraps all over the pasture and "I'm lovin' it, man."   Woo hoo!  

 

Yeah, I know what you mean.  Feeding coins in the meter for parking my Lamborghini and jet can be a real pain in the ass these days!  Life is tough!  :-)   Actually, I just stretched the Octa out a bit there and stuffed in a Google Sketchup jet for fun; To see how it would fit in 3-D and get an idea of what it would take and cost to actually build something at that scale.   An old friend of mine is chief pilot on a fleet of Dassault Falcons and others.  Been an company jet pilot a long time.  Sent that to him to think about...as some fleets leave their jets on the line because you can't hangar them all.  Airplanes are best hangared.  Expensive jets you always hangar.  Workhorse, fleet jets and companies that don't do high-end work...or ops that require fast takeoff (such as air ambulance and military)....you can't hangar them much.  Takes awhile longer to pull out the birds.   Little birds --- Cessnas, Pipers, and others -- often get left out in the weather on tie-down.  Just like with horses, pampered horses get the barn/ stall.  Others are lucky to have shade/ rain cover.  But that horse you leave out year-round in the weather has a really sucky life.  It totally thrashes a nice airplane.  Sun degrades the tires, instrument panels, interiors, discolors windows, fades paint.  In 5 years of weather, a new airplane is crap and looks 10 to 20 years-old all around.  Costly things to restore.  Mostly, moisture on any metal is bad.  Fixed wing aircraft you can run near forever while engines and mechanical are easy to make new again and regularly require overhaul.  But, what ruins any aging fleet is loss of the airframes -- particularly the wing spars -- to intergranular corrosion (a flaking corrosion that makes the aluminum spars come apart like opening pages on a book), which directly relates to moisture (especially in these coastal moist zones compared to Arizona dry storage).  That's one of the things you're always peeking at through the wing access panels on inspection, and spraying laquer coatings really helps slow that down but it is inevitable over the years.   The wings and tail sections are what require protection most.    An entire bird can be built up from just the data plate alone, but -- just like a car -- if the body is crap....for that particular car, its life is now junk for the scrap yard, as only a few get restored.  Being in the sun raises the cabin heat greatly.  Everything sweats and degrades in the sun. 

 

So, there is a need here in Lake County and around the world for that unserved little market of cheap, durable, portable hangars.  Things able to hold up under ample winds, weather, and airport prop wash.  Something you can keep staked down, but also roll the bird into and out of....like a protected boat under a carport.   Most just build a shade canopy, however.   Faster, cheaper, etc....but a full enclosure gives that moisture protection that is important to the airframe, yet never really taken seriously by owner-operators until too late.   Polymer coatings of the interior airframe are the best bang for the buck alongside at least using sunshades on the windows, duct caps, pitot tube covers, tire covers, and they even have battery powered vents & cooling fans you can stick in the windows to keep cockpit temperatures stable in the sunlight.  That's bare minimum for preserving a nice aircraft on the flightline while losing only the paint over time.  But, you can't beat the relative luxury of a hangar -- in any form -- for maintenance, security, tool storage, and overall longevity of all equipment;  Same as cars or boats are best garaged.   Nicer the car...the more you garage it.  You don't leave a Ferrari out in the rain and sun is all.   Difference between Ferrari owners and aircraft owners is that airplanes work as mules.  You can have some very expensive equipment worth way more than dozens of Ferraris all just left out in the weather because the equipment has serious work to do, not luxury use.   Beautiful Leers, Gulfstreams, Falcons, and helos all just sitting on the flightline with coverings.....because a fleet operation cannot stick them all in the hangar....and the hangar is needed by the shop guys for tending to a couple birds before turning them back out onto pasture.   In smaller fleet aircraft operations, about 20 to 100 birds on the line and 3 to 5 in the hangar at any time is normal.   Less extensive servicing and repairs you do on the flight line -- rain or shine -- and those times you really miss the hangar comfort.    As the military knows, sometimes it's nice to just drape a huge canopy over the birds on the line.....particularly when working in the hot sun or having to do things in the rain.  You really can't work on equipment well when it's pouring rain on you, but sometimes you have to.   Dome structures and vinyl are nice there.

 

Stan 

[Snow Ranch]

Oh, if buiding those Octas or anything.....lots use tubular PBC or conduit, but you're really better to go with square tubing, I-beam, or channel material....or to make such things from wood as in the template given.  Tubes bend too much.  Solid bar stock also bends.  Strength and optimum material use in is the I-beams, channel, or T beams due to better section modulus.  Square tubing, I-beam, and channel put the strength of the material right where you need it for tension, compressive, and torque stresses but don't waste costly material in those spaces where you don't need the metal or wood.  Tubes give no strength in the centerline, and so bend easy.  Bar stock (like rebar) bends easier because no geometric reinforcement of the flats.   The stength of a PVC arch can compensate for that weakness of tubes and people do make domes and yurts from such things (or flattened bicycle tubes & electrical conduit at the ends for drilling and bolting)....but, if you want strong, rigid, and enduring regardless of winds.....the skeleton must be strong and the same with the skin.   Cheapest and strongest will tend to be skeletons made from T beam plywood or OSB sheathing board screwed or nailed and glued (like in making trusses).   Whole skeleton can be made from very few sheets of board cut on a tablesaw.  Then, just put the billboard tarp triangles nailgunned down and pulled tight.  If making a greenhouse, find the strongest, most UV-resistant, thick and clear poly skin you can find and do the same.  Or, better yet, add criss-cross wood and cut/ mount scrap glass panels.   Or make your own glass sheets.  Lexan and other polycarb sheets are usually very pricey. 

 

Remember, also, that plastic and Mylar can be heat fused.  Thinner things like Mylar are easy to join with just the edge of your clothes iron.  Same for plastic films.  Plastic in the sun just really discolors, degrades, and goes brittle with time, though.   Glass is nicest long-term.  Where cosmetics are desired, on could put a lot of little glass panels together with wood frame into a cute little greenhouse with these Octas.   Stained glass and art as the 12 triangles would be really cool for hippy yurts....until your llama and goats come crashing through the windows!  :-)  But, hey....one could start up a whole pyramid power cult church with this stuff!  Get a little organ music going.  Some holy rollers singing choir in the yurt.   Make a fire pit in the center and put a vent cover over it while ducting out the chimney top.  From the outside at night, that stained glass Octa-yurt would be a really pretty sight!   And, I think these days people are doing cheaper forms of quasi-stained "glass" from colored plastic or glass and easier glue methods.  You could always just make your artwork of colored film over the glass or clear sheet.   Whatever.

 

Catch you later,

 

Stan