Building a school

It's the day before the first day of school, so it's a good thing I closed on the property yesterday. I walked out this morning at 5:30 and started building it. Digging the foundation took until 9:00. I poured concrete and framed the first floor by 10:00. Next I set the central rafter and roughed out the roof. I took a half-hour break at noon for lunch. Then, feeling rain in the air, I finished up the roof. Back on the ground at 2:30, I wrapped the sides and brought in the window casements. With a little bit of protection, I went in and installed the plumbing and electrical wiring. By 4:00, I was done with the doors and and had almost finished the shingle siding. At 5:00, I started paving the driveway so the truck with the desks and books could get in at 5:15. I power washed the whole place and  was done at 6:30. Students and teachers should start coming tomorrow at 8:30.

Home Improvements

2012-04-13 10:26:18-0400

The way I'm building the new house is really interesting. First of all, the land was donated by the town because it's a brownfield in a flood plain. So the first thing I did was dig down to the bedrock, about 12 feet down, and soaked all that soil in a big heavy-metal-digesting algae tank. Since I work at C6, the carbon nanotech materials company, I had access to some experimental carbon fab equipment. There's this new device which takes a carbon source (the algae in this case) , purifies it (actually resulting in some little grains of those aforementioned heavy metals), and builds it into fibers that are about as strong as anything can be. The device makes a 1x1cm rod about 10 meters long. This rod is so light and stiff that it doesn't bend at all, ever. I modded the device, so that it build a cross bar bud every meter or so.

The base of the structure is a kind of mesh that actually bonds directly to the bedrock at the molecular level - no other adhesives are necessary. I'm also building a kind of swale/dike, anchored the same way, that will direct the water around the house and back to the river in case of a flood. It will actually create a wall of hydrodynamically stable water in that case. This is only possible because of the unimaginable strength of these materials.

I intend to build a super strong shell with integrated triple pane diamond windows in it. Inside the shell will be a shelter, which can be as fanciful and flimsy as I wish, since the shell completely protects it from the elements, a series of green house plots and water purification stations (boiled by black graphite heated by diamond fresnel lenses), and other sustainable amenities. Heat radiation is also directed at a large slab of exposed bedrock, which retains the heat overnight.

I'm going a little nuts with the fab machine, making a kind of diamond bubble substrate, on which I can spray some photocell material that self organizes into redundant micro electric cells. The cells squeeze all the sunlight that normally would be reflected off into the cavities of micro-bubbles, making them highly efficient and profoundly flat black colored. The electricity is channeled into a system of microwave laser transmitters and directly broadcast into my battery/inverter system.

This house will be a kind of showcase for C6, so it's being documented as I build it. Stay tuned!

How To Do It

The first thing to do is unscrew the valve and roll up the bottom to squeeze out all the air inside it. Then, it's relatively easy to stuff the thing into the hole in the wall. Make sure you've driven the picture hooks into the wall deeply enough so as to be able to hang the concealing portrait securely over that hole. Next, you must paint the wall a lighter color than the adjacent walls, and move a chair or credenza under the portrait.

 

Taking a moment to rest on the floor, you can then start work on the medallion. Remove the retaining bolts which hold it to the ceiling and save them in a teacup. Carefully wrap the plaster medallion with wool blankets as you remove it from the ceiling. A quick dusting with diatomaceous earth will keep the fleas from propagating. Reach into the cavity and locate the gas cap. Twist the cap counter clockwise two turns. You are now ready to replace the medallion by reversing the previous steps.

The rugs on the floor are next. They often conceal the fact that the floor has not been varnished in the center of the room - 19th century floor technology was expensive. Roll back the northwestern corners of the rugs (the least affected by sunlight in the Northern Hemisphere). Seek floorboards that were obvious replacements. Often these boards are loose and can be easily pried up. Remove the boards carefully and strew pebbles beneath them before replacing them.

Remember: you cannot be too careful or proceed too slowly with renovations. Be sure to map out enough time for this process!