Month: February 2012

With reading break in full swing and most of our group members dispersed across the province, this week was uneventful for our project.

We are now in the final stages of our Greenhouse design, and are meeting with Mila on March 1st to present our deliverables: an Exhibit Concept Document (ECD), a report justifying our material choices, and a report outlining the anticipated sun on the greenhouse. We have mostly finished our deliverables, but have some final adjustments to make before the big presentation. We will be meeting as a group on Monday finalize the details and prepare for our meeting with Mila.

Tune in next week for our final blog!

Cheers!

UBC CSL – KSSP Greenhouse Project

We’re glad that reading break is coming!

The week of February 13th was pretty busy for us (Labs, Reports, and Midterms), hence we were not as productive as usual.

However, we have some updates about the sun trajectory and at what times the greenhouse will be shaded by the dome of the Science World. In our previous calculation, we just assumed that the height of the building is infinitely tall, hence the greenhouse will be shaded at around 3pm all year long. Now, the spherical shape of the dome, and the height of the pedestal of the dome (i.e. the building that houses the lobby – we assumed it’s about 12m tall) are being considered. Therefore, we came up with new approximations.

The Greenhouse will start be shaded:

• at around 2pm on Winter Solstice (December 21),
• at around 3pm in October and March,
• at around 4pm in May and August,
• and around 5pm on Summer Solstice (June 20)

We used Sun Path Diagram (downloaded from http://www.gaisma.com/en/location/vancouver.html ) and superimpose it on the greenhouse on the Plan view of KSSP Science World sent by our client.

The Yellow colored area are the all possible trajectory path of the sun throughout the year. The blue line is the sun path during winter solstice (21 December), and the green line is the path on summer solstice. Those lines are also numbered (06, 09, 12, 15, 18, etc) to tell where the sun is at 06 o’clock, 09 o’clock, 15 o’clock, etc. The geodesic dome of Science World is located approximately at west-southwest of the greenhouse. Therefore, the greenhouse is more likely to be shaded sometime between noon and sunset.

The approximation needs a lot of iterations which will be too long to be posted on a blogpost. A more comprehensive explanation will be submitted along with the ECD (as our client asked). Our deliverables to the Science World will be an ECD, a report about material options for the greenhouse, and a report about the sun trajectory. The ECD will also be sent to Susan Nesbit.

Our possible next meeting with the client is on Thursday, March 1st 2012. Mila told us to avoid Friday, so that more people from Science World can attend the meeting for our presentation.

We are looking forward to it!

Cheers!

UBC CSL – KSSP Greenhouse Project

Hello everyone, it’s Charles Noftall coming to you this week with this week’s blog submission…

Today we capped off a very productive week with a visit to Science World where we met with Mila and Georgia about our project. This week we also had a visit with David Kaplan of the UBC Faculty of Land and Food Systems, as a follow up to last week’s meeting with Laura Sand, and we made a first copy of our project ECD.

Our meeting with David Kaplan went well as we were able to ask him lots of questions about his greenhouse, which is more sophisticated than the one which Laura Sand manages. We specifically asked him questions about automating our heating and ventilation systems, which he believes to be a necessity in a greenhouse. David was very accommodating to our request and generous with his time and we are using lots of his suggestions in our design. In addition to the automated ventilation, he also suggested using sun shades (which could also be automated) and concrete flooring rather than gravel. David also gave us a very good suggestion in using electric heat tracing cables to warm any soil which may be exposed to colder temperatures, such as the clear soil-profile box. After the meeting with David we went to the Agorra Cafe for a mid-afternoon snack and drew up the first draft of the ECD. It feels great to have everything on paper!

Today’s meeting with Mila and Georgia also went well. We were able to present our ECD and the Google SketchUp model that Logan made. They seemed to be pleased with our progress and liked our ideas, and they also had some really good feedback for us to consider before our final submission, including:

• Reducing the size of the transparent soil profile box to maximize usable space in the greenhouse
• Putting in some research on whether or not mold/algae/other foreign organisms may grow on the edges of the soil profile box and, if so, is there something we can do to prevent that (i.e.-a clear plastic membrane of some sort?)
• Since there are already some plants similar to the hanging wall/vines at the back of the greenhouse, could we put more shelves in so we could have more plants.
• Could we revisit the exterior material choices to see if there is something that may have better insulation than the double-paned glass without compromising viewer enjoyment (i.e.-transparency)
• Could we put the post and beam structure on the SketchUp drawings to give a more realistic idea of what it will look like (rather than the idealized view currently being represented)

Mila and Georgia also requested that we submit our justifications/research for our project, so they have them as they move forward on the project once we are finished. Finally, they requested that we move our final submission date from next Friday, and we tentatively agreed on moving it to the week after mid-semester’s break as Friday afternoons do not work well for the Science World staff.

All in all, I think this week may have been our most rewarding week to date as we are beginning to see our design really come together and we now have more tangible evidence of all the hard work we’ve put into it. We still have work to do, but we are definitely up for it!

Today, on Friday, February 3^rd, we finally had the chance to meet Laura Sand, the manager and horticulturist at the UBC Greenhouse, to give us a tour at two of the greenhouses at UBC. They are located at the rooftop of Biological Science Building North Wing. She was very helpful, and even let us to visit the greenhouse anytime we want. Here are some of our findings:

• Sunlight catchment is very important for greenhouse as it is the primary source of heating, and is essential for photosynthesis. Since the KSSP greenhouse will be built close to the main building, by checking the sun trajectory of Vancouver, the greenhouse will be shaded by the dome after 3pm throughout the year. Therefore, we need to maximize the catchment of sunlight by placing the slope of the roof towards southeast direction.
• In the greenhouses, some sodium lightings are installed to mimic the light intensity of sun. Laura mentioned 1 or 2 lightings will be sufficient for 1.6×2.2 m² greenhouse, and be turned on according to the needs of the plants. Each lighting fixtures will cost approximately $60. Even though it’s not the main purpose of the sodium lightings, they also contribute to the heating of the greenhouse. The temperature in the greenhouse was about 28 degree Celsius.
• As for air circulation, a manually operated vents and electric fans were installed in the greenhouses.

We also came up with some decisions during our regular class meeting on Monday, January 30^th. These are the highlights of the group meeting:

Materials:

• We decided on galvanized steel frame (little maintenance required, low cost, almost completely recycled / recyclable) and glass (recycled / repurposed product, traditional aesthetics, highly transparent allowing lights to come in).
• Did you know that bubble wrap can also be used for insulation? Just smear a little water on the window, lay the bubble wrap on it. Once the water dries, the bubble wrap will stick there and retain the heat.

Interactivity: Considering that the majority of visitors are kids around 9-13 years old along with their parents (Source: Science World media kit), we came up with 2 interest points for the greenhouse.

• One is a transparent pane of glass along a plane bed put near the glass wall to allow small kids to see the soil profile, plants’ roots and hopefully some potatoes or carrots that are growing underground.
• Second, screens and fixed panels with pictures can be installed for adults to be engaged with the greenhouse while their kids are busy getting fascinated with the soil profile. The screen and panels will include facts related to sustainability, local food production, or perhaps, a calculation breakdown about how much money and greenhouse gases can be saved by growing your own food.

And finally, to make the greenhouse more appealing, colorful plants such as purple cabbage, capsicum, tomatoes, carrots, herbs, and edible flowers can be planted.

Charles seems to be enthusiastic to learn more about greenhouse, and he’s setting up another meeting with expert, David Kaplan from UBC Land & Food System Faculty, for a tour of another greenhouse. We are looking forward to it and hopefully can learn more about designing an efficient and sustainable greenhouse.

Cheers,

Matthew