Week 8
This week our team tackled finalizing the different components of the rainwater system.
Magdalena found a pump that would be enclosed inside the barrel which would simplify out plumbing run. The only issue was that it needed to operate in a certain amount of water, so we ultimately had to throw it out of the design. I found a new pump that would have to be exterior of the barrels, but was less expensive and more powerful. It will need it’s own housing, so that is something we will need to research this week.
Last Tuesday we had a site visit with Dave and Billy. Billy is the Plant Manager for Hillsdale High School, and in our short meeting with him, we were able to get a bunch accomplished. There were two important points that he brought up:
The storage system needs to be enclosed by some sort of slotted security fence. He is worried about the student’s potentially messing with the system, and requested that we include that in our final design.
There is already pre-existing irrigation lines that run all over the hillside. He would like a more precise idea of how the water supply line is going to run.
The first point, we still need to address and add to our design. During our visit, we ran a tape measure and walked the site to find the best pipe run for the water supply. It is still much easier to visualize using Google Earth Pro to do the top down dimensions. We estimate the pipe run will be approximately 190 feet from the pump to the drip system controller.
One of the components that we discussed at our team meeting this week is the crossover valve between municipal water and the new rainwater source. We think that at this point in the quarter, it will be better to design a manual crossover with the time we have left over.
I worked on the Cad design for the dimensions of the barrels, and other components.
As a team we also finished our draft of the final project report.
This week, we need to meet with team two regarding our collaborations on the drip irrigation system. Combining our resources will ensure that HHS gets the best end product.
Overall, we made some good progress this week, but we need to finalize our components fitting together by the end of the week (friday) and send our preliminary design off to Billy for his feedback.
