Cold frame / North Window / Bonus Project
These three portions of the project were probably the biggest parts of it. All of the other "mini" pieces to this project were basically leading up to this one. The other ones showed us techniques, and strategies, and materials to use, and a bunch of stuff like that. That was to prepare us for these pieces of the project. Our goals were to design a cold frame, a solution to making use of the north window on the solar studio, and a bonus project if we thought that we had time.
One part of this project, was the cold frame. A cold frame can be best described as an "individual green house". It's goal is to be able to create perfect living conditions for a plant. Also, it is much less expensive to make than a green house. It is primarily supposed to work in the winter, because usually winter is when the plants freeze over. The cold frame is designed to let heat and light in, but not out. The reason that our class is designing cold frames, is because the garden club at San Marin feels that they would benefit them and the plants. Our design was very simple, yet very functional. It had five sides. On the front, it had a removable window. The window was there to let in sunlight. The reason we made it removable was because we wanted the gardener to have easy access to the plant without taking the entire cold frame apart. An example of something that they might want to do to the plant is fertilize or put new soil in. On the top side, there is a watering hole. We put this there so that the plant could be watered as easy as possible. We knew that it would be had to fit a watering bucket through the removable window space, so we decided to put a hole. This hole is coverable so that heat can't escape when the plant isn't being watered. Our cold frame is angled at 62º. The reasoning behind this is that the sun is at about a 28º angle in the winter. Since 28º + 62º = 90º (a right angle) this means that the sun will hit the cold frame at a dead on angle, thus maximizing the heat and light that the plant gets from the sun. The outside color of our cold frame is black. The inside is white. The black outside will absorb the heat and light, and the white inside will reflect it back on to the plant. The reason our inside is white, and not a mirror, is because we thought that a mirror would be too efficient, meaning it would burn and kill the plant. The total cost of our cold frame came our to be $61.91. The next part of this project was the north window design. Last year, the freshman class had a design ready to be implemented, however it was stolen. That's why we are doing this. The sun is always on the southern side of the sky. It's never on the north side. There is a window on the north side of the solar studio. Our goal was to make use of that by any means that we could, thus making the studio even brighter all of the time. Our design had two parts to it. Both of them were reflectors. We decided that we wanted to reflect light from the south side, into the window on the north side. The sun would come form the south side, and would bounce off of the reflector sitting on the top of the house. The light would come from the first reflector, to the second reflector sitting on the window. The light bouncing off of that would go through the window, an into the house. The total cost of our design came out to be $171.00. Our design is simple, and gets the job done. Another up side to our design is that it doesn't obstruct the view out of the window. This is important, because if the person in the house didn't want to see out of the window, then our solution would be to simply just take out the window. There is a balance between, making use of the window, and being able to see out of it, and I think that our group did a good job of finding that balance. Right now, the solar studio at San Marin doesn't really have any use. It's kind of just sitting there. This part of the project was optional. The goal of the project was to add something to the solar studio. This something didn't have to be helpful, it could have just been some little thing that made it look a little bit nicer. That's kind of the path that we were trying to take (pun totally intended). One day, our group was walking to the solar studio to do classwork. By the time we go there, our shoes were soaking wet, and all muddy. Plus, I was on crutches, making it pretty challenging to get there. That was when we got the idea of putting in a path. We thought it was a good idea, because it's nothing fancy, but it makes the house look more welcoming, and easier to get to. I was very happy with the way that our group worked together. There were very few instances where we strongly disagreed on something. For the most part, we seemed cool with any idea that somebody came up with. One thing that we could have improved on was that we could have all worked on a little bit of everything. For example, during this project, I did 100% of the cold frame, but nothing else. Anja and Brian did 100% of the north window, and Anja and Zoe did 100% of the bonus project. We could have all worked on a little bit of everything. This would give us a better understanding of each project, making it much easier for all of us to be on the same page. All in all, I think that we made a pretty good group. |