Author Archives: Adam Ostereicher

As our project was one that could be built, we gave the community both a tangible return and a plan.  We provided them with the means to recreate the living fence in various places to suit their needs, as well as the actual fence itself, which they can grow their various herbs and plants in to be shared amongst the community.

We ended up learning a lot about project management.  It has become evident the true need for strong communication, without which makes project development stagnate.  We also noted the need for proper planning, both in the design phase and pre-design phase.  Neglecting even the smallest details can become disastrous.

This project helped to show us the true effort that goes into even the simplest of Engineering projects.

Figure 1: Poster summarizing the “Living” Fence project

Figure 2: Prototype of fence completed

This blog post will present an overview of the process our team took in order to design the project outlined by the World in a Garden organization.

The project outline was to create a “living” fence made of bamboo that has plants/herbs growing within the bamboo.  The purpose of the project was to optimize the efficiency of the space used in the garden.

Brainstorming:

1. The Pole:

• First we decided poles should be about four feet long; Approximately one foot buried for stability, and thus making the fence about 3 feet tall. Also, the poles are to be spaced with one foot gaps.

• Second we discussed the holes we would be cutting in the poles;  After some debate we decided on circular holes because they would be the  easiest to install (opposed to oval holes), as well as being very well suited for the “planting” process because the herbs come in preprocessed circular containers.

• The stability of the fence was the next issue to be discussed.  At first we thought we would just bury about a foot of each pole, but we then realized it would need more stability so we considered connecting them with wire.  The wire would help hold the fence up, but since it would serve no other purpose we concluded that replacing this wire with an irrigation system was our best option.

• Another idea we decided on was to build concreted bases for the poles in the corners.  These poles would need to be extra stable due to the extra load they will take from the irrigation system.

2. The Irrigation System:

• The system would connect all the poles via a hose slotted into the top of each pole.

• The distance needed to span is approximately 160 feet, which is manageable for this design.

• A problem we ran into was transferring the water to each section of the bamboo (bamboo has sealed sections).  In order accommodate to our design we decided it would be easiest to simply break these “seals” (via jamming a rod of some sort down the shaft of the bamboo) and filling each pole full of soil to hold the herbs in place (at the holes where they will be planted).

Diagrams:

Figure 1: Diagram of pole design

 Figure 2: Diagram of corner pole with concrete                  

Figure 3:  Overhead diagram of the garden fence

Timeline:

February 12: First meeting with client

March 7: Design is finalized

March 10: Order required items

March 12: Visit site to check ground stability, and other environmental parameters

March 14: Bamboo arrives on site

March 15: Begin construction

March 23: Finish construction

The World in a Garden is an organization that focuses on educating the community and working working on various urban projects to help teach community members about the importance of nutrition health and how to grow your own food.  They have farms located between East and West Boulevard at 57th &  55th Avenue in Vancouver. It spans alongside the railroad tracks.  Each farm contains various foods from different ethnic and cultural backgrounds to maintain and spread culture diversity.

While they are currently a smaller organization, they eventually hope to work on a global level and create similar projects in various third world countries.  Ultimately they wish to create ten similar, large impacting gardens in ten different countries.

The ultimate goal of the living fence project is to develop a design that can be recreated and implemented in other various farms to maximize the usable space.  As the project stands now, the goal is to create a fence out of bamboo from which various herbs will grow.  Community members can then come and pick the herb to use in their home cooking.

The project is fairly open to change and as a result most of the constraints are mobile.

The non-negotiable constraints are:

                   -the perimeter length must be 25ft by 55ft

                   -the fence must be made out of bamboo

                   -a watering system needs to be in place

                  -it must be possible for the design to be re-created

The negotiable constraints are:

                  -spacing between bamboo

                  -irrigation method

                  -hole dimensions in bamboo for herbs

                  -work schedule (to small degree)

                  -cost

                  -general design of overall project

The fence needs to be easy to replicate and flexible in implementation.  Multiple designs will have to be proposed to fulfill this requirement.  We must also consider that the re-creation of this fence will not be done by engineers so the design has to be simple enough for everyone to understand.  As a result the fence has to functional and practical without unnecessary clutter.

In order to achieve these goals a large amount of brainstorming and minor testing will be required to ensure success.  This could mean the early ordering of bamboo to test a few various model ideas to understand which works best.  Ultimately success will be based on the number of diverse and creative concepts that are brought forth to the group.