Purpose
Students in Introduction to Design (Engr215), at Humboldt State University, are working with Humboldt Bay Center for Sustainable Living to design and build projects to support the eco-hostel being built at the Samoa Cookhouse in Samoa, Humboldt County, California.
Insulation experience
This interactive module will allow the client and future visitors to feel and see the real differences between various available insulations in local conditions thereby educating better choices. The experience will need to:
- be durable
- be adaptable
- be interpretive
- look professional
- collect data
- compare relative versus theoretical values
- compare available insulations such as wool, blown cellulose, etc.
Mentor: Clay Johnson
Convective heat loss experience
This interactive module will allow the client and future visitors to feel the real effects of convective heat loss from an uninsulated house using local data on actual house leakage, thereby teaching the importance of weatherization and insulation. The experience will need to:
- be durable
- be interpretive
- look professional
- collect data
- compare the insulation ability of various construction materials against local wind conditions
Mentor: Clay Johnson
See Can You Feel the Heat Loss?
Greywater island
This installation will treat greywater from the eco-hostel in a manner that:
- is legal
- is effective
- is safe
- provides shelter, privacy and aesthetic refuge
Potential mentor: Tressie Word, Andrew Posner
Solar shower
This installation will be an outdoor shower that:
- is private
- reuses materials
- uses the sun exclusively to heat the water
- looks professional
- is durable and safe
- provides up to 50 minutes of hot showers per sunny day and 20 minutes not cold showers per overcast day.
Potential mentor: Ben Scurfield, Alan Cook of Solar H2OT
Shower greywater
This installation will be a contained greywater treatment system for the outdoor shower that:
- reuses materials
- is aesthetically pleasing matching the solar shower motif
- is durable and safe
- is interpretive
Potential mentor: Tressie Word
Bike mechanical power
This installation will allow for the eco-hostel to have a bicycle powered mechanical application or applications that are:
- useful (e.g. blender, drill, knife sharpener, grain mill, etc.)
- safe
- aesthetic
- inspiring and interesting
- durable
Potential mentor: Bart if he is still in town.
Bike electrical power
This installation will allow for the eco-hostel to have an bicycle powered electrical application or applications that are:
- useful (e.g. tv/vcr, charging kiosk, computer station, skype phone)
- safe
- aesthetic
- inspiring and interesting
- durable
Potential mentor: Bart if he is still in town.
Natural paint experience
This display and experiment will experiment with and display a variety of types of natural paints on a variety of local construction materials so that the client and visitors can make more educated choices on coatings. This experience should:
- collect data
- show many combination
- be aesthetically pleasing
- be interpretive
- include test boards (approximately 2 ft x 3 ft) split up into a grid of test materials
- possibly include painting a room or wall with the winning combination
- consider sustainable metrics, such as locality, embedded energy, VOCs, etc.
Potential mentor: Drea Lanctot
Interactive, integrated, metering scheme
The scheme will monitor and display many different live data such as waterflow, electricity, etc. (maybe VOCs) in individual rooms with external data such as wind speed, temperature and photovoltaic production in order to inform the eco-hostel and visitors to current conditions and inspire conservation. This scheme will not be physically built by the students, but multiple versions will be proposed using excel, 3D video and other tools in a manner that is:
- professional
- inspiring
- instructive and feasible
Potential mentor: Tony Kim
Windbelt
For this installation student will need to build a Windbelt (tm) module (multiple windbelts) to provide inexpensive energy from average wind at the Samoa Cookhouse that will:
- power something useful (e.g. a cell phone)
- be interpretive
- be durable
- be aesthetically pleasing
- look professional
- include data collection and display
Potential mentor: Enrique Diaz or Elizabeth?
Not picked
Window experience
This interactive module will allow the client and future visitors to feel the real difference between various available window choices in local conditions thereby educating better choices. The experience will need to:
- be durable
- be interpretive
- compare multiple window choices, such as coated double pane versus double pane with no coat and storm window over single pane versus single pain
- look professional
- collect data
- look at visible light, IR, etc.
Potential mentor: Antony Kim, Clay Johnson, Roger Pryor or Bill Warf
Composting toilet
This installation will adapt and utilize Sunfrost composting toilets to provide a toilet that is:
- private
- safe
- free of foul odor
- aesthetically pleasing
- inspiring
- interpretive
Potential mentor: Larry Schlussler