Category Archives: Monthly Goals

Making progress….

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So I am making progress on things, slowly but surely.  I have got a small portion of the narrative down on paper and have been developing how to visually display the design as it pertains to the narrative and the different phases.  I can honestly say it is a challenge to develop this narrative and design documents – it is the compilation of years of research and work on my part, functionally combining the systems and practices I have been working on.  I get so excited sometimes watching things come together and at the same time reminding myself to keep focused since this is all going to take some time to realize.  I like the way I am doing this, it feels right – I am putting a lot of time and thought into the design, I want to make sure I have covered all the bases and have zero’d in on the best possible design – I can’t wait for it to be public and then get feedback for tweaking and further refinement.  I feel I have a good layout for my narrative and visual representations, I am going to do a hybrid of sort – Have the narrative with textual details on the systems, functionality, background, intent, etc.  I will have a 2D CAD representation for each section of the narrative with additional information and finally I am thinking of using pictures with notes and sketches over laid to show how things are to change.  Finally I want to get an artists rendition of the final completed work as my cover.  Parts of the narrative are going to be an aside to the living building challenge since they don’t necessarily pertain to the structure but more to the operation and livability.

Outside of developing my narrative I moved forward with the next stages of the grey water system.  I have the main trunk lines in for the upper and lower gardens, now I just need to get the soaker hoses in place for each bed.  These are 1/4″ diameter soaker hoses coming off the main 1/2″ trunk lines running downhill from the upper garden.  I hope to get a work party together here soon so I can bust down the remainder of the fence material I have and build four appropriately sized grey water containers for the upper garden and get those plumbed in and functioning.  For now I am still working off of city water.

I have put a great deal of thought into my transportation – I originally bought the VW Vanagon to convert to a compressed air vehicle.  I’m still going to do that, but I am realizing more now than ever it is going to be more of a show piece and serve for long travel – in the interim I need something light and more robust for town travel.  I am back to working on my three wheeled concept car/bike that I developed plans for several years back.  I am putting a little tweak on it in regards to construction and style – I will start developing some solicitation material here soon so I can hopefully get the parts and pieces donated from scrap – my budget is going to be low.  Also in regards to the VW Vanagon or my Airbus, I am working on a possible inline series pneumatic drive system that would hopefully deliver more HP, better performance, regenerative braking and better efficiency… Time will tell, it’s still just theory and numbers at this point…

I am still working on getting good at doing my blogging, hard for a perfectionist like me to let you see the inner workings when its not done….

March Goals

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Well, march is already upon us and I have some goals setup – mostly finishing up what I started last month.  Wish me luck in getting my agenda items done and hopefully I will have some SD plans for you all to check out and possibly my final concept for the property.

Personal Life - I will be taking the CAD design I created and toddifying the bike stroller to match.  Some welding, some wood work, some fiberglass work a little electrical, etc.

Home Life - I will be finishing up the waste management system by creating the labels, getting the family used to using it, determining how to deal with the waste, modifying my purchases to limit certain wastes and trying to update you on how it’s going.

Sustainability - I will be crafting more ladybug houses and possibly some yellow jacket houses for sale and install on the property.

Other - I will be sanding and putting together the Wardie.

February Recap

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Well, this month didn’t go exactly as I had hoped – but I did learn some lessons and make some progress in some areas as you probably saw in my February Mid-month update.  Of course I did get some non-agenda items done like planting in the garden, the sides on my raised beds (only taken me 2 years to get that done), and some good ideas for how to possibly get materials within my limited budget.  Sooooo, to recap let’s see where I ended up:

Living Building - I managed to read through the living building challenge guide and I have started the design documents, but still have a good amount to go.  I did determine this is going to be a 3 phase project spanning the next 5 years.  I hope to have phase 1 complete and the overall final concept done.

Personal Life - I did purchase a bike stroller, but did not get the toddificaiton done.  I did manage to get it in CAD and do the design for enlarging it, next month I hope to get the parts and get it welded and crafted up.

Home Life - I made a little progress on my waste management – picked up a couple of crates and a rack for organization.  The idea is to create simple easily labeled bins for organizing my recycling so that I can deal with it properly.

Sustainability - I created my prototype ladybug houses and built four more.  Created an instructable for how to construct the ladybug houses, did some art work on them and feel accomplished.  Next step is to market them and see if I can’t sell them.

Other - I finished the final design plans for the Wardie and managed to get the top cut and pieces ready for sanding.  I did have one problem, on of the top pieces cracked due to stress on the wood and the strength of it.  I managed to get it glued back together and you can barely notice it was cracked.

Even though I didn’t meet all my goals, I feel it was a great month and next month should prove to be just as promising.

February Goals

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So here I am with January wrapped up, a good start I think to it all.  Registered the home project with the Living Building Institute, got the website up and going, had a party to announce my intentions to a good portion of my friends, garden beds all filled with fresh material ready for spring planting, and much more.  However, I got to thinking it would be good to set some good goals in several areas of my life that really focus in on the over all goal.  So as part of my lead into February I am going to start setting goals each month in the following categories:

Living Building – projects that involve the house and moving towards the living building challenge goals.

Personal Life – Personal life changes, how I personally do things.

Home Life – Things I am changing in my home and how I operate.

Sustainability – These are sustainability goals that may or may not coincide with other areas.

Other – This category is for random goals I have planned.

So, let’s give this a shot for February… Here are my goals for February.

Living Building - Read over the Living Building Challenge documents in more detail, get my conceptual design documents together – maybe see if I can find an artist to help me do a rendering of what I am hoping for.  At least get a site plan, floor plan and some general labels for what I intend – this has been designed and redesigned in my head I can’t tell you how many times, time to put gray matter to digital paper.

Personal Life - I am going to make this month a build on something I am already doing.  I have been biking as my method of travel for over 5 months now, about 14+ miles a day round trip with use of MAX transit system to help.  I do however use my Vanagon on Monday and Friday when I need to transport my kids.  So, I want to take it to the next level and try to eliminate car usage entirely.  My goal is to find a bike stroller – Toddify it (make it larger, more comfortable, safety, etc) so that I can transport my kids over long distances on bike.  I will explain more about this as the process unfolds, along with a rationale as to why I am doing this over other options.

Home Life - In my home life I have been thinking a lot about my waste – particularly plastic.  Now I have already gone through a period of not using garbage service before to get a hands on feel for how to deal with your own waste, it was a challenge to start but doable.  I did start back up using waste services again so that I could go through the process again, be a little more prepared in the transition.  I am going to transition over this month out of using garbage service again and I am going to try and reduce the amount of plastic usage in my house – packaging and storage.  However there will be some distinctions on where plastic will be acceptable which I will go through in my posts.

Sustainability - This is going to be an easy one, this month I am going to work on habitats for living beings around the site.  I am rolling this into a small family workshop I am having that is going to focus on lady bug houses and lady bugs.  However, I plan on trying to also create several other types of habitats – bat house, bird house, and yellow jacket.  As time and energy permits I will work on posting plans, and video for these.

Other - I have a private project for a client this month, I call it the Wardie.  I will be taking a family heirloom desk that was hand made by their grandfather and transforming it into a custom bookcase.  The reason for the transformation is the desk was not a functional piece of furniture, but had sentimental value that they wanted to preserve.  I will be using all reclaimed material and hand worked/recycled hardware to complete the project – I have high hopes this will be an exceptional piece when I am done.

I hope you enjoy this month and I look forward to sharing things as they happen.