BM2008 post 1
How our various projects turned out:


The Science Dome did a great job of cutting down on wind and dust, which was especially helpful during the three total white-out dust storms we had to endure. However, it did get really hot underneath it. It would've been less hot had we kept more of its doors/vents open all the time; we kept them closed to keep the dust down and to discourage casual browsers. Fortunately we only had to deal with unwanted people in it a few times (clynne had to work extra hard to kick out some hippies with a sense of entitlement during one of said dust storms while I was sleeping - thank you honey!). In the future we should attach a tarp (or Shelter Systems' shade attachement, if we feel like buying it) for extra shade while we're setting it up.

The dome was staked down with two levels of stakes - tent stakes along the bottom rim, and carabiner-bungees between foundation stakes and the first-level ring. It never moved an inch during any of the wind storms. The only structural failure was a break in the cord holding one of the lower attachment points to the ground-level ring, causing one pole to pop out, on the first night. I was able to fix that quite easily.

The hexayurts also did a good job of keeping dust out. Combined with the dome it meant that pretty much the only dust we got in them was the dust we tracked in ourselves. The insulation on Hexayurt 2 also seemed to cut down on some of the noise, meaning it was slightly easier for us to sleep even with the neighboring Playa Surfers camp pumping out really bad music until 9am every day. They did get rather warm, though; running the swamp cooler during the day turned the living yurt into a sauna. We eventually figured out that the way to keep it cool in the morning was to crack the door open at night to let the cool air in, the close it around dawn when one of us got up to go to the bathroom. This gave us a relatively cool space until 10am or so. I saw many hexayurts out there made out of polyisocyanurate foam boards; every single one (even the demo one from the Hexayurt Project) had multiple vents and a mechanical fan system of some kind, which ours did not. So clynne was right that the stated magical thermodynamic properties of the hexayurt were way overblown, but as a fellow Gigsvillain put it, "[I] wanted to believe".

This was Hexayurt 1's third field set-up and it was pretty beat up, so we burned it out there rather than take it home. This made packing the van for the trip home much easier.

Although our living set-up was pretty functional, it took something like 5 hours to get both the dome and the living yurt set up, meaning we didn't finish until after dark with our 3pm arrival time. That's kind of a bummer when all you want is a place to sleep for the night.

We had planned to have spray-paintable stencils with various Hello Science graphics to decorate the dome with; although we got the lettering traced out onto acetate, we didn't actually get any of them cut out completely, so that didn't happen. We also traced the outlines of lettering for a large Hello Science sign to attach to the dome, but we didn't get the letters painted, so didn't put it up (we brought paint out, but I only got an "H" painted in during some dust storm downtime).

As for the wind turbine, in my previous post you can see the videos I took of it actually flying. The timeline went something like this: Saturday we arrived and set up the dome and the living yurt. Sunday we set up the storage yurt. Monday there was a white-out dust storm and we didn't get much additional work accomplished. Tuesday we got the rudder mounting slots cut and assembled the rudder, and also got the chain connecting the motor to the propeller properly sized (which involved enlarging some holes on the mounting plate so we could move the propeller slightly). We also assembled the mast, but didn't raise the thing up because it was getting dark when we were ready to do so. On Wednesday we raised everything up and guyed it in place, only to discover that the rudder seemed to be working incorrectly. Thursday, we took the whole thing down, fixed some problems with the rudder assembly, ran wire from the rotor down the mast so we could connect it to a battery, raised it back up, re-guyed it, and successfully jump-started the propeller from a battery and detected some generated power afterward. This was, of course, with the help of a lot of people. I think the highlight of Burning Man 2008 for me was seeing that propeller turn for the first time when we touched the wires to the batteries. On Friday, during the afternoon the thing started spinning by itself; that's when I took the video I posted. Friday night the wind got even more severe, and the thing was spinning like crazy, until the rudder eventually walked itself out of its mount and fell to the ground next to it, fortunately not hurting anyone or busting anything on our cargo van. This caused the blades to turn parallel to the direction of the wind and the thing didn't spin any more. On Saturday we tried jump-starting the propeller just to see if the motor was OK, and nothing happened. Sunday, we took the whole thing down again, and discovered a break in one of the wires inside the mast; the motor still turned when connected to a battery, so it's OK.

So, the wind turbine was up and functioning for a little more than a day, but it did generate some power. I had said that I would be happy to get it up and spinning and ecstatic if it generated power; needless to say I was walking on air on Thursday afternoon.