Matthew Schwabauer Log

Sunday July 01, 2012

This place is great! I am really glad to be here. I arrived yesterday afternoon and have done a combination of work and settle in. Today I did planning work for the ongoing HabLab construction. I've drafted up a drawing of the first room to be completed and have a pretty good handle on what we'll need to do. You can see the plan and profile i created for room one

Monday June 25, 2012

I worked on a revised construction plan and schedule for the Four East Rooms of HabLab. This is a public google document available here. I've revised my thinking from working on all rooms simultaneously, and completing them all at the same time before July 21, it will be advantageous to work on the rooms one at a time, so that after the first week a room will become available every three days, and all will still be completed by the 21st. This will also let us perform all operations simultaneously and we can revise our methods and hopefully improve our performance on each room. Tracking our production rates will be an important part of developing effective plans and estimates for future construction work on Factor e Farm and elsewhere, so I'm setting up sheets on that spreadsheet linked above which will be ready to plug in the numbers for each day.

I also researched window framing a bit since that is something I don't have much experience with. It seems we will be able to make an effective "rough n ready" frame, even with hinges, without too much trouble out of 2x4s, some silicone, and some smaller wood strips and wood screws. The doors seem to be more of an open issue, the cheaper they can be acquired, the better. Perhaps there are construction salvaged yards in St. Joe or KC where doors can be had cheap. There's a Habitat for Humanity ReStore here in Lawrence which is quite useful for bargain construction materials.

I've gotten my gear mostly sorted and my personal obligations in order here in Lawrence. I've mostly worked out transfer of my current garden plots to new care and I've arranged the sale of my beehive for a reasonable deal for all involved. It was a good day and a good weekend.

Tomorrow I'm going to work on a farm and then Wednesday I'll be at the same farm observing some lumber milling. As part of my preparation for establishing the forestry program at Factor e Farm I hope to glean some best practices for harvesting and processing timber. The sawmill I will be observing is not exactly the same (the biggest difference seems to be that I'll be observing a band saw running on an ICE, whereas the sawmill at Factor e Farm is a circular saw and runs on hydraulics. I need to do more research on the Factor e Farm saw design and current status.

So that's about it, I'm still on schedule to depart Lawrence Saturday morning and start work at Factor e Farm on Saturday/Sunday.

Friday June 22, 2012

Worked on Matthew_Schwabauer_Schedule

Worked on Matthew_Schwabauer_Proposal