Architect on board!

We officially have a principle investigator in the architect department working on our research project with us! Mark Taylor has recently joined us and he brings a wealth of experience with him. Particularly compelling for us is his work on the 2009 and 2011 solar decathlons. For info. on his work, check out:
http://2009.solardecathlon.illinois.edu/gallery.html
http://www.solardecathlon.illinois.edu/


His profile, bio, and interest in this collaboration will be up on our website soon. 

Hi Folks! Now that we have our trailer and some building material, we will begin building our small-scale eco-mobile. We are looking for a few things:

1) Someone with building know-how and the proper tools to help with our small-scale eco-mobile model. We would like to gather and hone skills before beginning construction on the big eco-mobiles in May.

2) A space to work on our projects. We are particularly looking for garage space, but we're open to lawn space as well.

If you have any leads or would like to volunteer yourself, please contact us either through our blog or at ecodance2@gmail.com.

Grassroots

This grassroots collecting is great. I had no idea so many people would get involved. You say you need something and all of a sudden it just begins showing up in various quantities. We went to Corkscrew the other day and came out with a little bucket of cork; later on that week a friend visited and pulled a single, solitary cork out of her purse. I LOVE. How this makes me. Smile. S

We have a trailer! Thanks to Brian Behrns for lending us his truck!

Okay. The trailer we have is just for the small-scale model, but we're still excited. Thanks to Brian Behrns for lending us his pick-up truck, we travled to Oakley Illinois (an hour for Urbana) and picked up a 5x8 trailer to be used for our small-scale eco-mobile. It's barebones, but that's what we're looking for. We'll begin building in the next few weeks.

Wax--not so flame resistant?

More info. below from Emily Sha.


"Firestarter logs are basically paraffin wax mixed with sawdust.

You mentioned you had used a candle to experiment with the wax. Yes, on a small scale wax is flame retardant. They are good fire insulators on a small scale, electrical wiring for example. However if you experiment on a small scale with wood or wool, you'd find the same thing would happen, plastic too.

Instead imagine this, you have a bright lamp that gets too hot, that catches a curtain on fire, and slowly heats the wax. As the wax melts it turns to oil, and gradually the heat increases to the point where it catches and AHH raging oil spill fire! (it's kind of how a candle works, wick is easy to burn, lights easily, the heat melts the wax into oil, and the wick continues to pull the oil for continued fuel).

If you're worried about it "catching" a flame just make sure its covered by a flame retardant surface (polished wood for example). Or you could insulate it will clay/mud."

Thanks for the info. Emily. This is really useful. We may decide not to use wax now. With regard to insulating with clay/mud, that would be my first choice. But with these mobile units, we need to keep the weight down. Clay/mud will get too heavy. More thoughts on cheap, light-weight fire resistant elements?  

Synthetic Cork versus Natural Cork

Below is info. courtesy of Emily Sha. Thanks for contributing Emily!

"Synthetic Cork is made of thermodynamic elastomer which is a high quality food grade plastic. It's not very likely to offgas, grow mold etc, because of the high investment per bottle that winemakers put in. Great for insulation, fire resistant, etc...but still plastic.

Cork is used all the time even in it's virgin state for walls, ceilings and floors, so it apparently doesnt violate any safety codes. Superb insulator, sound proofer, joint protector, etc. However, it can be contaminated with mold but this is somewhat rare."

Trailer found, cork testing in process

We're building a small scale model to help us understand the design and building process and to test the feasibility of our found/collected/donated materials. Haas found 5x8 perfectly dumpy trailer to begin building a small scale model. We will soon be searching for a building guide/s for this phase. And we are currently looking for someone with a vehicle that has a hitch or a long bed pick-up truck to help us collect the trailer--it is located one hour from Champaign-Urbana.

Testing: we are looking into ways to replace foam floor insulation because it's expensive and toxic. We gathered wine corks (synthetic and natural cork), and burned both. Natural cork burns like a mother-*&%!. Synthetic doesn't burn. Hallie thought that was great! The question is: is it toxic? If it is, is it more toxic than foam-floor insulation. If not, we may use it. Another question regarding the natural cork: is it possible to coat it in wax (wax is flame-resistant), how heavy would that be, how long would that take, etc.