Contact Us

CONTACT US

Alec - ale216@lehigh.edu
Aly - ajl216@lehigh.edu
Ben - bmc217@lehigh.edu
Tori - vaw212@lehigh.edu

Saturday, May 31, 2014

Day 13

Friday is hands down the best day of the week. Not only because we have the weekend to look forward to, but this friday was particularly special because we got our first paychecks today. We spent most of the day working with our (now 3) Arduino boards. They're proving to be more complex than we initially thought. Connecting them to an internet source such as Xively to keep track of data is especially difficult. We are building prototypes for our temperature sensors, and we tried the caulk for waterproofing, but its too soft. We ordered test tubes to try and put the sensors in before putting them in the PVC. I suppose pictures would be helpful to describe this but we didn't take many today.

We ordered a pizza for lunch, and then discussed logistics of our project, and SUSAN, and regulations and laws and permits we need to be aware of. We made a plan for next week (week 4) and it involves getting a lot of professors and faculty on board with our project. That's really going to help boost our credibility and value.

During some down time, I was elected to go add coffee grounds to the compost pile and turn it by myself. Seeing as how much I love working with the compost pile, let's just say I had a greaaat time. There were rats, and flies, and it was hot. Luckily, it didn't smell as badly as I thought it was going to. It was quite an arm workout though. Doing the work we did with four people the other day with one pitchfork by myself took quite a while. In hindsight (and actually I saw this at the time) at least 2 people should turn the pile at a time if it's getting done manually.


Thursday, May 29, 2014

Day 12




I picked up Ben this morning with two 5-lb buckets full of food waste from Brodhead. Difficult to explain my excitement. Alec was twenty minutes late because he was picking up a second arduino from a friend, so Tori, Ben and I spent those twenty (well.. twelve, because let's face it I was late) minutes playing with remote controlled helicopters. We got down to business working on rules, regulations, and an overall game plan for the upcoming weeks. Not that we were discouraged from Tuesday's meeting, the opposite actually, we knew we needed to step our game up to play in the big leagues. We took a visit to our main support system, Bill Best. He let us stay and chat for upwards of 45 minutes before parting with a few inspiring words, "just have fun with it" and "don't stop what you were doing just because they told you to". He's one of my favorite people on the planet.

We had a 12:30 meeting with Jason at the garden, and a 1pm appointment at Wilbur Powerhouse to use the soldering equipment. Being short for time, we figured we would skip lunch and leave early. How wrong we were. Worst decision our group has ever made in hindsight. But, after our meeting with Best, we set off to the garden for a rousing hour of composting. Unloading, dumping, turning, pitchforks, wild rats, ants, garbage, mold, dirt, hay, shovels, garbage, woodchips, oh and did I mention other people's garabage?! I'll be amazed when I see this pile of junk and food waste and paper plates turn into usable fertilizer. After turning the pile and adding our new food waste, we removed all of the non-compostable utensils by hand and put them in a bucket. We piled it high, and put the tarp back on, leaving the wild rats to come and go as they please in peace. We waited for Jase, the garden guy, to come show us how to use the generator to power the water supply. It was nifty to see, and cool they let us use all their facilities on our own. Adult problems. Once we were through there, we headed to Wilbur.

Stomachs grumbling, we hit the ground running, not knowing a single thing about soldering. Two hours later, we had some pretty wicked setups going on. Soldering little teeny tiny temperature sensors to 20-ft wires and have them still work and give accurate readings is very promising for the upcoming steps of creating SUSAN. I can't wait until tomorrow where hopefully we make a functioning prototype model using the PVC and caulk again. Still working on waterproofing it.

I edited an entire video of what we did today, but due to youtube copyright issues, I couldn't upload it without it being muted. I'm not sure how to avoid this problem, but it's very, very frustrating. So, instead, here are some pictures from today.














Wednesday, May 28, 2014

Days 10 and 11

We didn't come in the Monday after Memorial Day weekend, but that Tuesday was our big meeting. In the morning, we went to the community garden to play around with the compost pile currently there from the Alumni meeting a couple weeks ago. It's basically a pile of garbage. All of it isn't even compostable. Some cups there aren't even recyclable. Tisk Tisk. We sorted through what we could, and threw out the rest.

Our meeting began at 4pm, and we got there at 3:30 to be early. Three of our advisors came to listen in and provide some adult backup for us, and the other three men (one quite late) were all from Facilities Services. They gave us the very realistic, real world, numbers and bottom-line approach towards our project. Not that they were discouraging us intentionally, but nothing they were saying made our end goal seem realistic whatsoever. What we got out of that meeting was a few things, Regulations and permits are important, and we aren't going to get anywhere without a business proposition, that has costs and deficits and profits and all that jazz. Basically we have to show them that they're gonna make money on it, and that it's regulated properly so it won't give them bad press, and we'll be a success. That's the dream. However, we decided to redefine our success. If we go farther than the last group did with composting, and actually creates a small-scale system that lasts throughout the summer and next semester, then we will be happy.

 We've taken to furthering our experimentation with Arduino technology, and today we played with a lot of wires and wire cutters and saws and PVC pipe and caulk and temperature sensors, making some sweet temperature probes. Ben was our computer guy, making testing to see if any of our creations actually worked with the Arduino board. Some did, some didn't. We have the issue of connecting little teeny tiny wires together. We tried wrapping them around each other and then taping them with duct table and electrical tape. Only mild success. It didn't really work. We also are faced with the challenge of waterproofing our sensors. Let me explain these to you. They are smaller than the round-face of a dime. they are smaller than one of my fingernails whole. They're really really small. And we have to stick them into compost piles and have them be able to read temperatures and soil moisture levels. So, we are definitely going to be working on this more. I'll get back to you on that.

Earlier today, we spent an hour in the pouring rain shoveling woodchips into the back of a pick-up truck, and then out of the truck into the garden. That's dedication. It wasn't even our truck, it was our friend Amber's. ( Thanks Amber!) Alec took a wrong step and flipped backwards out of the side of the truck into the grass. Oops. It looked like it hurt. Sorry Alec.

More to come in the next week, including pay checks! ;) and pictures.

Thursday, May 22, 2014

Day 9

Today was such a long day. It began at 9:04am when I arrived, oatmeal bowl in hand, to pick up the group to go shopping. We made a list, and with our allotted budget from the school, set off to Lowe's Home Improvement Store. It absolutely did not disappoint. 
We purchased:
--(8)- five gallon buckets with lids for compost collection, Blue with the Lowe's logo on it. 
--PVC pipe (which I learned stands for Polyvinyl Chloride) to make some SUSAN prototypes *
--Spray paint (For the buckets)
--Caulk. Which rhymes with Chalk. Which is used as a sealant for leaks and such (also going towards SUSAN). 
--A Caulk Gun(for application of the Caulk). 
--copper wire 

Glenn, the Lowe's employee working the register, was having a particularly hard time ringing us up. He accidentally rang us up for nine buckets instead of eight, so we got an extra bucket.. That we paid for.. Oh well. The more the merrier I suppose. We took our goods and headed back to our growing and increasingly messy workspace at Mountain Top C. I sat and put pennies in chronological order. Post-penny operation, we came up with a "one page" for our huge important meeting on Tuesday. A one page is something to guide our discussion so we make optimal use of our time, including a brief description of our project and the questions we have to ask for them. The meeting consists of like four people who are way more important than we are, from Facilities Services and other places. We are going to pitch them our idea and see if we can get their input, opinion, and possible problems they can foresee for the project. We are taking the day off Monday since it's a holiday to be home with our families, so tomorrow is our last day to prep for our meeting. Utilizing Google Drive's shared documents, we all got to type on one document at the same time. It got a little hairy, but we got it done. Or, at least, a rough draft of it got done. We can finalize it more tomorrow and Tuesday morning. 
We took a break for lunch, and after being requested to bring scissors, I could tell the second half of the day would be more riveting than the first half. I brought Becca along for the fun because I knew it was going to be good. We were spray painting today. Though dangerous, I think we managed not to get paint in too many places we weren't supposed to. Painted our buckets so we can put them places and they can look pretty and advertise our project. Yellow recycle symbols were designed and cut out by me, spray painted by me and Ben on the lids. Tori designed the "grow" letters and I spray painted those as well onto the buckets. My entire hand was green by the end of it. Talk about getting a green thumb, the wrong way. It then started thunder storming and hailing, and we called it a day. 
Now, to explain SUSAN. Sensors Using Sustainability Arduino Networks. We are creating thermometers, soil moisture gauges, and possibly oxygen level gauges. Hopefully we can implement this in our Alpha Test Phase, sticking it in the compost pile for readings. We are using most of the stuff we bought today to create prototypes. We need tiny little sensors to be surrounded by PVC pipe and caulked in so they are waterproof and connect with wires to the Arduino board, linked to a network where we can monitor them wirelessly. It's a big task, but with composting being a painstakingly long process, we needed a side project. We hope it will add significant value. 

I hope tomorrow we get to take a half day, and get all of our work done in the morning and early afternoon. Here's to dreaming. 




Some sort of sick joke 

Wednesday, May 21, 2014

Day Eight


Daily Deliverables
--Play with Arduino
--Design of Garden Robot 


The eighth day of the Grow Project began with almost everyone on time ( I was a few minutes late because of Oatmeal, and the bus neglected to drop Ben off at our building.. again). Somebody should really get on that bus situation. I placed my Cheez-It box down beside Alec's complicated-looking kit, and we worked to grind out some results. Ben and I messed around with the Arduino for two and a half hours. An Arduino is a single-board microcontroller, intended to make the application of interactive objects or environments more accessible. That's Google's definition, copied and pasted. I can only further explain it by telling you some of the applications we tried today. The Arduino and the breadboard (the white part with all the holes) connect to the computer, where you type some code to tell it what to do. Then, if you set it up correctly, something cool should happen. So, we got an LED light to flash, we set up a button to control the flashing LED light, and we set up a potentiometer (a dial that turns) to adjust a 3-color LED light when its turned. From there, the possibilities are endless. Over the next few days we hope to continue becoming acquainted with the uses of the Arduino and its coexistence with Xively (a website that wirelessly takes readings from devices and displays them on the computer). This is the stuff I could really get into, computers, gadgets, wires, coding, all that jazz. 
     On the flip side, we had three important meetings today, the first being with Joe Kornafel from Sodexo and dining services. After our 12:30 lunch break, we reconvened at Brodhead's dining hall to speak to Joe (the ice cream freezer looked so appealing). He basically was on board with helping us, offering to fill buckets we provide him with the kitchen's pre-consumer food waste. He said we may only get one bucket a day, but hey, it's a start. We met with Delicia after, who is the most amazing woman I've almost ever met. Delicia is the Sustainability Coordinator (officer?) for all of Lehigh. She got us pretty psyched to be working on this project, and is going to help us set up a meeting with some important people to slingshot our project into orbit. We are hoping that our project gains some credibility, and that Lehigh is going to want to take on our project. I want to earn it, not have it given to us just because we are a Mountain Top Project and dug around some dirt and garbage for eight weeks. I want to hand them a solid project worth taking. 

Our last meeting was at the Community Garden with Dr. Holland and a man named Jason Slipp. Jason was the man, he knew his farming and his composting, and was pleased to hear about our project. So far I'm finding our project is getting a lot of positive feedback. I hope we can deliver for these people, and for ourselves. 

We romped around the garden for a while (note to self, wear durable shoes willing to get dirty from now on), checking out old compost piles and the shed full of tools. SO many tools. Pitch forks for us to turn our piles with. We are going to hopefully be setting up windrows in the far back corner of the garden specifically section off for composting projects. Then we are going to establish a turning schedule and manually do it ourselves, really getting nitty gritty with it. Once we have successfully made some compost, and can show people that this project is worth investing in, we are trying to get Brickman or another company in on tractors to turn our piles for us. Really bring it to the Institutional level, that's our goal. After standing around a year old unfinished compost pile for a few minutes talking, Jason said my favorite quote of the day.


"Oh, and before you leave, check yourself for ticks."


 Just what I wanted to hear...

Well, that's about it for today.




Tuesday, May 20, 2014

Day 7



First official day in Mountain Top C building!!! The hype is real. It looks like an old airplane hanger, with ceiling fans straight out of the hovercraft in The Avengers movie. (no jokes, where's iron man?? calling Robert Downy Jr). Despite how awesome they look, they blow an annoyingly cold breeze onto all of the helpless victims below. Note to Self: dress for the tundra. The hanger is set up with 29 different sectioned off work stations, using rolling white boards as dividers. Strips of outlets are provided, along with four chairs and a table for each. It looks moderately like a classroom environment, that is, if classrooms were in giant loading bays for spaceships and other aircrafts. They added metal mesh over the railings of the "observation deck" I'm assuming so we don't jump off or fall through? I couldn't decide. They built a "pantry" which includes two tables and chairs, and a vending machine with actual food in it, like.. Fage yogurt. There is an outside seating area on a cement patio with a few tables surrounded by chairs, which I sought refuge from the cold today several times. They are in the midst of building two workshops, one being a woodshop, and a room full of fish tanks for the aquaponics project. Cannot wait to make friends with them. The building is not quite finished, but it's come along way from a week ago.

 Our day began with our daily deliverables in Alec's tiny handwriting that we've all grown to love. To properly "move in" we decided Alec's enormous speakers would be a logical addition. We made ourselves comfortable at a section with Wheely-chairs (the best kind of chairs) and got to work. Lots of sticky notes and white board writing, per usual. Our song choice of the day was 8 days a week by the Beatles.


Now that all formal business is taken care of, I can begin to talk to you about sciencey stuff. We took the initiative to create a collaborative list of the Steps to Composting. Since we realized we would soon be composting for realsies, and we need to seem adequately educated on what we're doing. Here's what we came up with..

Steps to Composting:

1.) Prepare the site
     a. flat land
     b. drainage ditches

2.) Making the Pile 
     a. start with bulking agents (woodchips/hay)
     b. layer food waste/dirt/bulking agents

3.) Manage the Pile
     a. keep track of necessary data
     b. add food waste and bulking agents as needed
     c. turning the pile
     d. covering with dirt and a tarp

4.) Curing and Starting a New Pile

That's a streamlined but expandable list that seems moderately appropriate for beginners to start composting. Crossing our fingers that we know what we're doing when the time comes, but a piece of me knows that we'll be just winging it out there by ourselves. Advisors are great guidelines, but that's just it, they are guiding us and nothing more. We are coming up with the "assignment" on our own. It's our project. It's our baby, and there are no limitations to where it can go besides ourselves. We are our own limits. Which is sweet and scary at the same time. "Blessing and a curse" Alec had said to a reporter today. Seeing as we were one of 3 groups out of the 29 total that actually showed up today, and we had a week of project under our belt, the journalists were on us like white on rice. They all wanted pictures of our boards and they stood there, four in a row, all taking down the same notes as we spoke about our project. One guy said he worked for national media, like Philadelphia and New York.

After our composting steps lists, we talked a bit about Leachate, which is compost run-off water that mixes with drinking water sources making them unhealthy for the users. We came up with possible ways to avoid leachate, keeping track of them and deciding which ones we were going to implement for our Alpha Test Phase.

Today Alec also proposed something that really got our gears going. He suggested we create some sort of robotic sensor system to measure temperature, soil moisture and oxygen levels. Upon further research, we saw that this could be done using an Arduino (which I was completely unfamiliar with at first). It's gonna take a lot more research and experimenting and testing, but I think it adds a whole other aspect to our project and I'm looking forward to where it takes us.

We visited Bill Best, our favorite man to bother during the week, and bounced some ideas off of him. He likes our work, and thinks our "ideas" have finally become a "project". According to his definition anyway. That man has never once told me I couldn't do something. He's given me helpful suggestions on where to take something that wasn't fully developed, but he has never told me No. He truly believes in people, and well, ideas. Which makes sense, because he's our IDEAS advisor/dean.

We split for lunch and independent research, learning as much as we could stand about Arduinos and robotic sensors. Meeting up again at 3:30, shared our findings, made some plans for tomorrow, and called it a day. I also learned that Hot and Spicy Cheez-Its are the way to be. Always. Well, Looking forward to actually composting soon, and toying with some Arduinos. For now, that's about it.

Day 6

Today's Daily Deliverables :

--Identify Research Topics
--Steps for Alpha Testing
     - call Brickman
     - Identifiy people (who do we need to talk about what)

Monday started off a bit delayed due to Graduation (basically I wanted to watch it but it conflicted with our time slot). Once we got rolling, we did all of our final preparations before we moved into MountainTop C. Alec, Ben and I drove up to tour the building and see how they were coming along. They had since finished almost everything, including creating 29 work spaces with rolling white boards and cork boards, along with tables and chairs and outlets. Ed, the construction supervisor was there and we had a quality chat with him again before heading back down to STEPS. I'm sure gonna miss our glass box, but it's time to move on to bigger and better things.

The song of the day is Last Dance for Mary Jane by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, just because Alec was in a mood. One of my personal favorite songs. It set a wonderful mood for the rest of the working day. We make ourselves a list of questions we wanted to get answered, as well as tried to map out what the rest of our week is going to look like. Tuesday bright and early, meaning 9am, we will be claiming our space up at Mountain Top. We're all excited and curious to see what the working environment is going to be now that we are in the same building as the 28 other groups. Here's to a good second week and beyond.

Home-Research Topics for Monday Night:
--After having done some research, create your own list of composting steps to follow
--Combine steps Tuesday morning with group's
--Have a final set list of steps so when we start composting, we know what we are doing

Thursday, May 15, 2014

Day Four

FIELD TRIPP!!!!!!!!!!!

I picked the group up in my brown 2002 jeep at 8:30 this morning at the usual spot, and we headed out route 22 to Easton. Lafayette College actually is really pretty, despite how much I'm obligated to hate it by being a Lehigh Student. They're also half our size, which makes them clearly sub-par. After getting slightly lost, we made it to room 318 in the AEC (some engineering center). We met with Arthur Kney, the Department head of the Civil and Environmental Department at Lafayette. He was a nice guy, had a daughter named Elise, and drank large Dunkin Donuts coffees. He seemed very knowledgeable and willing to answer any questions we could fire at him about composting. As we left his office to go to the actual composting site, I caught a piece of paper taped to his door with a quote on it that I was rather amused by.

"If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?"
-Albert Einstein

Touche, Einstein. We hopped into Art's neat blue Nissan truck, with hats and sweatshirts askew in the back seat from Maine and other such places. The composting site was only a short drive away, and from there we actually got to examine their Earth Bins and the contents inside. And to my pleasant surprise, it didn't smell nearly half as bad as I thought it was going to. And the weather today was 70 and muggy. So again, let me emphasize my pleasant surprise. Just as we researched, there were two Bins underneath a soundly built Solar Panel structure. After a moderately thorough round of questioning from us, we got what we needed and bid Art adieu. See ya later Lafayette, although sooner rather than later because we are supposed to meet with the woman in charge of their garden, Sarah. 

Yep. that's compost. mmmmmmm...

sweet getup ya got there Laf

Bin


Art had mentioned that the Lafayette garden was a few miles away, and that's where their compost gets put to use. He told us we could go there with Sarah. Being the adventurers that we are, we took the initiative to google it and go investigate for ourselves. Dang. This garden puts ours to shame. I guess that's what you can expect from a small liberal arts college; people who care about gardening. We saw a family far into the garden planting and hoeing, so we ventured over to ask them some questions. This was their third year at the garden, the bunnies ate the leaves off their snap-peas, and their kale and spinach was planted four weeks ago and still has barely grown. fascinating.. We explored to our earthy hearts' desires, and with wet, dandelion seed covered feet, shoes, and pants, we finally headed out. My shoes are still wet and it's been two and a half hours. 

Scaring the daylights out of my group by accelerating instead of decelerating towards a red light, we eventually made our way home safely. The song of the day is Ants Marching by Dave Matthews Band. One, because I love Dave Matthews Band and it was my day to pick, and two, it seemed reasonable considering all the insects and buggies and things we encountered today. If I could stay indoors for the majority of my days, I probably would. I'm a beach person, not so much farms. It's funny because only one person on our team is actually studying Environmental Engineering. Ben and I are both computer science, and Alec is Energy Engineering and Sustainable Development. Tori on the other hand is Environmental Engineering. She actually just wants to study Soil. Like dirt. Because it goes hand in hand with Archeology. But literally, soil.



After our field trip we spent a couple hours in our glass case, writing on windows and sharing with each other the prior night's research we gathered. We came on up with a game plan for the coming days, tomorrow's including coming in at 10 and leaving at 1 to get lunch together at the Goose. I am dreaming about these sandwiches. The weekend should be for a break, but we'll probably end up doing research anyway. We meet with Professor Best on Monday to get a good launch into the week. He's so inspiring. Future field trips are absolutely in order. Delaware Valley College is next, followed by Dickinson College. We are trying to make this project as hands on as we can, because I cannot sit around for the next 7 weeks. AND. MONDAY. we get to go to Mountaintop C to test our new digs. Fingers crossed they actually finish the construction. 

For now, that's a wrap I suppose. 

Wednesday, May 14, 2014

Day 3

Daily Deliverables:
--Assign research topics
--plan "Alpha Test Phase"
--prepare for field trip

Day three started off with Munchkins courtesy of Tori. Alec couldn't decipher which ones were chocolate. Come on, Alec. We put our heads together and decided it was a good idea to actually do some composting this summer. Sitting in classroom is getting tiring and it's only been three days. I can't do eight weeks of it. Luckily, next week we get to go up and play in Mountaintop C! So pumped. They even have a kitchen (pantry) for us. Once we cooked up a plan for a pre-phase-I (calling it Alpha Test Phase) we pretty much called it a day, considering our big field trip tomorrow. We are leaving at 8:30 for Lafayette college to meet with their head compost guy and scope out their set-up. We are hoping to learn more about on-campus composting so we can start our test phase.

For individual work, we split up the topics needed to be handled. We need to know the regulations that apply to an on-campus compost site, as well as the data that we need to collect and how to go about collecting it. We need to come up with a management plan for the summer and how it's going to get run, as well as email a bunch of people in order to get approval and make sure we can use the food waste from Brodhead dining hall. After that work was allotted evenly among the four of us, we went our separate ways, only to meet up again tomorrow morning.

Lots of pictures and information to come after tomorrow!


Tuesday, May 13, 2014

Day 2

Daily Deliverables:
-- Decide who gets to research what
-- Learn more about in-vessel vs. out-of-vessel Composting
-- Talk to Delicia Nahman
-- Field trip to Community Garden this afternoon

The feel of the morning was set by the song "Send Me on My Way". This song is the perfect road trip/adventure starting song. Much brain storming occurred today. Writing on the glass windows with markers to feel extra smart. We investigated composting facilities at other schools, such as Cornell, Lafayette, Delaware Valley College, and University of Colorado at Boulder. Given the daunting task of determining what type of composting system Lehigh should take on, we wanted to see how other schools around the country were doing it.

We gained access to a 65 page presentation of the University of Michigan and how their composting system was broken down. (get it? broken down? composting? jokes). They had this really neat idea of splitting the implementation up into Phases. So in our case, Phase I would be taking pre and post consumer food waste from just the Rathbone Dining Hall (our biggest standalone dining hall). Pre-Consumer waste consists of anything before it gets to the student. All the waste from prepping vegetables and such. Waste is considered Post-Consumer as soon as it is on a plate. Employees at Rathbone are hired by Sodexo and take care of all post-c waste. Students wouldn't even notice that their food was being composted if we did implement Phase I. We believe that is a good thing, because it is difficult to get people to change their habits (ie. putting food into compost bins instead of regular trash).

Phase II would be including the other dining hall Cort (pre  and post consumer waste) as well as Upper Cort (strictly pre consumer) and the Brodhead House Dining Hall. The concept is to start off with a place the has a constant flow of food, i.e. the low fruit on the tree. Easy to pick. Then as the phases progress, we tackle food waste from less consistent sources, such as libraries, classrooms, residence halls, and eventually every building on campus. This is a very long term and lofty goal, but hopefully one not out of our reach within the next 5 to 10 years.  Eventually we would like to incorporate the outer community of Southern Bethlehem, such as Broughal Middle School and local eateries.

We then backtracked our thinking. Drawing a big list of pro's and cons, we tried to determine the difference between Business As Usual (BAU) and Phase I. What would change from right this minute if we implemented Phase I? Things such as the dehydrator at Rathbone would be gone (which would make it slightly less smelly when you're walking passed the back of Rathbone which we all know is Hell on Earth), as well is replacing Cougles with Brickman. Cougles currently takes our waste from Lehigh to Four Springs Farm in Kutztown, PA (30 miles away). Brickman would just take it to Mountain Top campus (< 2 miles) to our own composting facility. Sounds ideal right? But the thing is, we then need someone to manage this facility. Whether it is a graduate student, a Sustainable Energy intern, or someone from an outside source such as Brickman, they need to know what they're doing. Or at least be passionate about it. After we create a facility with someone to manage it, there is still a matter of manual labor, to actually run it. Then, once it is up and running, we need to apply all of the regulations laid down by the EPA to make sure we can use the compost in a garden or what have you. In order to figure out if we are meeting regulations, we need to gather data of all the compost we make. This data includes aeration, moisture, temperature, and particle size. OH, and somewhere in there, we need all of the proper permits from the state of Pennsylvania.

As you can see, there are approximately one billion factors we have to take into consideration for this project. Let's delve a little bit into the difference between in-vessel and out-of-vessel composting. Not to bore you too much, but I just want to point out some enormous problems that we are going to face.

In-vessel composting is self contained, self-running, and self-monitoring (for the most part). They are expensive, small, and hard to expand. Lafayette College has two Earth Bins covered by solar panels to power them as well as to keep them covered, and they process up to 200 lbs of food waste per day. Delaware Valley College has out-of-vessel composting. They use 3 acres of land covered with Windrows that are turned daily. A windrow I learned is basically a huge pile of decomposing food. They are long and brown, and pretty much look like Hostess Ho Hos. A tractor with a cool turning mechanism (if you can afford one) turns the windrows in order to maintain temperature, aeration, etc. The hottest temperatures come from the center of the windrow, so it gets all mixed up to cool it down.

Super interesting, I know, but think about this. What happens to Del Val's outdoor Ho Hos in the winter? Riddle me that. How do two little Earth Bins maintain all of the food waste for Lafayette's entire campus? All good questions. We decided that field trips are in order.

Speaking of field trips, we decided to go to the Community Gardens after lunch today. Possibly up to Mountain Top Building C again too, just for fun. The first one we went to is the actual Lehigh Community Garden. Although it didn't look anyone had been there in months. It was mainly growing Dandelions. We saw some old piles of compost (possible windrows?). After a few minutes of perusing around there wasn't a lot to see, so we took off for the other site Lehigh could set up a composting facility. It was next to the highway, full of abandoned machinery and tons of wood. We saw a Brickman truck pull in as we were leaving, and we almost went to stalk them and interview them, but decided against it. Next stop, community garden number two. This one was a LOT cleaner and more organized and smaller than the first. We turned on the hose and even gave some plants a little sprinkle. Basically the second half of today was spent on reconnaissance, seeing what campus had to offer to our project. As they say, Location, Location, Location.

Team regroup at STEPS 430, our glass case of emotions, to split up research work. Half and half, in-vessel and out-of-vessel. aaaaaaaaand Break!


brown waste-- aka sticks and trees

sea of dandelions 

label on the water bin at the garden..

compost, with "decomposable plates and utensils"...yeah okay 

dead animal skull?

"it's broken. let's just leave it here"

clearly we know what we're doing. 

it was not moving.





Monday, May 12, 2014

Day 1


The GR2OW Project

Today was the first day of our 8 week Mountain Top Project which we've aptly named GROW (with the R squared). We started off the meeting in STEPS 394 with an hour and a half long brain storming session. Whiteboards and all. We even took a field trip to the bookstore to buy dry erase markers, sharpies, and sticky notes to properly prepare ourselves for the day. We've taken on the "Why? What? How?" approach of thinking, using that to give our project a rich sense of purpose. All of our ideas were constantly questioned with "Why?" to make sure we had reasons behind our ideas. Our "whys" were then followed by "Whats", which were what we hope to get accomplished. Lastly we made our "Hows", meaning how are we going to accomplish these goals.  Next, we went across the street to Packard to meet with our Advisor Professor William A. Best. With words of encouragement and a pat on the back, we decided to take a lunch break. 

Our project is starting a week earlier than everybody else's, so we aren't yet working in the Mountain Top C building that we are supposed to. We decided to go visit the building since we received an e-mail telling us that we gained swipe access to it. The building is from the 1950's the latest, once owned by Bethlehem Steel, used to perform steel testing. Lined with asbestos and filled with the general ambiance that comes with construction, it didn't quite look ready for us to work in. We met with the superintendent of the operation, Ed. Ed was a nice guy, and instructed us to put on some hardhats before we went exploring. Hardhats on, we set off on an excursion. We've decide to film a horror moving in there, considering that the building is God's Gift to Horror Films. Abandoned warehouses are just ideal. After going one too many places we shouldn't have, we met back up with Ed for a run down of the blueprints and a quick history lesson. Time to go, we've been in the way long enough. I can't wait to see the finished product next week. We made the decision to check back on the building daily to see the progress. 

We met one last time before going over what we wanted to get done for tomorrow. We created "Daily Deliverables", ie. things we want to get out of each day's meeting.

Today's Daily Deliverables are:

-Identify main research topics 
-housekeeping and general introduction 
-don't inhale asbestos
-film horror movie, make millions 
-come back tomorrow with more knowledge than you had today about Composting.