Collected Material

Look at all of the beautiful reclaimed wood we've collected! Exciting. We're also looking for rigid foam board. Do you have some or know anyone who does? Send 'em our way! :)

Fundraiser!

On Tuesday evening, March 29th 2011, EcoDance is hosting our first fundraiser at Corkscrew's Buvons Wine Bar in Urbana, Illinois. The funds generated will be used to purchase two 8x21ft flatbed trailers so that we can begin building two eco-friendly mobile performance dwellings. 


•Join us: 203 North Vine Street in Urbana Illinois. An entrance donation of ten dollars at the door covers appetizers, music, performance, games, and more. 7:30 pm – 10:30pm.


•Sponsor us: A suggested donation of $25-100 (gifts of other amounts are always welcome) receives special regards on our website sponsor page. Contributions of $35 and above receive one complimentary ticket. If you are not able to attend our event and would like to make a financial contribution, please find us online at Wepay: http://www.wepay.com/donate/98091.


•Volunteer for us: Please help us prepare, present, or promote this event with labor and/or expertise. You will join the growing list of co-sponsor on our website, and receive one complimentary ticket.

Thank you for your time and consideration.  We hope to see you at Buvon's!
EcoDance Collaborators

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?