Meeting John Moore

On Wednesday, after a nice fall break, we got the chance to finally meet face-to-face with the man who will end up stamping our construction documents. John Moore in accordance with Dave will be the ones going to jail if our structure fails and does bodily harm to the Medway volunteers and visitors – so it is kind of a big deal that we get this thing right. The fantastic news is that John loved our roof and thinks that what we have modeled will work with the help of a few glue-lam beams and a little optimism. He helped us rethink some of the cast-in-place concrete details of our footings especially when it came to two key issues:

1. water intrusion (where wood soaks up water that it might be resting in)
2. Wood touching wood (where moisture could hang out)

Basically our details need to allow for some space between the wood column and the concrete footing (via a spacer or washer) and we need to leave a gap between the wood and the sill or ground so that it never directly rests in a pool of water.

John was also helpful in showing us a simple equation in how to size our columns:

Length of the column (in inches) / the Smallest dimension of the column = X

• X must be less than 50
• X is preferably less than 30

Last night, we also presented Leslie, Jim, and Harry from the Conservancy with a document describing a different solution to the sink placement. The considerations we have to deal with involving the sink as Yage may have spoke about yesterday, include:

1. Volunteers harvest in the morning (usually between 9 – 11 am), which means that the sunlight will be coming directly from the East and South
2. Some vegetables need to soak in water, some need to be washed and laid out to dry but they all cannot be baking in the scorching southern sun
3. GAP certification (Good Agricultural Practice) requires that the vegetable station must be covered primarily to protect from bird droppings and that it must be placed on a floor or pad that can be cleaned

Here are the very basic options we provided, outlining some benefits and drawbacks of each, and hopefully we hear a unanimous decision soon!

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