The Kelly Kettle!

Considering buying one of theses for the coming camping season. Also, designing a larger, water heater sized version for use in the floodplain project.

This video is hilarious! So Irish!

Assignment 5 - Flood Plain Minimum Dwelling

Coming into the final stretch here, seeing the mounting challenge of building a model for this thing, and still not being wholly sure of most of the interior components. So how did we get here? 

I'll try my best to re-cap. Traditionally the floodplain is not inhabited it is usually lived adjacent to, and sometimes is farmed, due to the natural cycles of flooding the plain offers very soft, fertile soil, excellent for agriculture, terrible to build on. Our first explorations looked into floating houses, on poles, or anchored with a retractable winch, then we looked at stationary, more substantial structures like bridge abutments. Both of these options seemed less than exciting, and posed significant questions all based around the basic "but why" inquisitions. The questions led to the why would stay in the flood plain, if its floods anyways? Why couldn't we just leave?

Early American cultures thrived in the flood plains of rivers. It is a location where the resources needed to sustain life are readily available, fresh water passes nearby, game and fish travel along them. Sometimes the river was also their sole mode of transportation. The early native North Americans did not stay there, their homes were temporary, easily picked up and moved and they travelled with the changing seasons. They moved south when the snows came in the winter, and travelled back in the spring to follow the migrating herds.

We deiced that a mobile architecture was needed to address the ebbs and flows of the river. The concept is to find a robust, off-road vehicle that would allow us to travel into the flood plain, and design a comprehensive dwelling on top of it. This would allow us to dwell for the temperate seasons within is abundant, secluded, remote setting of the floodplain and be able to pick up and leave when things get hairy. 

We started by looking at amphibious vehicles, APC's LARC's, ARGO's, Duck trucks, you name it, we were looking for an accessible platform we could build on. We eventually settled down to the UNIMOG, for sale to the general public, imported from Germany, designed and built by Mercedes. The UNIMOG isn’t an amphibious vehicle but it is capable of fording water up to 1.2m deep without a snorkel.

A Mercedes Unimog is the tool of tools. It is a cross between a transport truck, a Jeep, and a tractor. Weighing in at 9900 lbs with a payload capacity of 15,900 lbs and towing capability of 45,000 lbs the Unimog is the strongest 4x4 vehicle available to the general public. It is capable of incredible steep climbs and descents, plus it is an incredibly handsome piece of equipment.

Here is an informative promotional movie of these things in action. 

A Mill for Sale!

Last week I discovered an old Grist mill for sale North of Port Hope, this past saturday we drove to check it out.

The Property is only 1/2 acre and, like most mills, is located in a flood plain. It doesn't have a septic tank or potable water or three phase electricity. When we arrived we more than excited, for multiple reasons, it was a shed, hanging out over the water, and all the components were clearly visible. We snooped around back the building and took in the wonderful decay, its multiple repairs and its current state of decomposition.

The Turbine location. The flow control gate, and axle and drive shaft are all exposed to the weather. There is also a massive ice sculpture that has formed over a crack in the penstock.

We met with the real estate broker and he showed us around, gave us some numbers on mill, he said it has an average flow of 1800 gal/s, and an 18' head between the damn and the turbine (which we measure to be 16).  He also showed us inside and we got a peek at the old roller machine that the owner used for grinding grains and making custom animal feeds. This thing is a really awesome piece of history.

 We left the site more than a little excited at the proposition of owning a little hydro mill.