2017: zero moop and recyclable materialsThe hexayurt has always been a zero budget project - I paid for R&D out of my own pocket, and that's often resulted in cheand nasty solutions. The polyiso board and bidirectional tape "standard hexayurt" was cooked up one summer in a hell of a hurry, and worked well enough that it became a standard, but I knew it was lousy from a sustainability perspective, and the moop problems that have developed as boards age or are badly transported are a growing problem at Burning Man as we scale from a few dozen units to a few thousand. We have to be incredibly clean, and incredibly efficient, for the hexayurt to stay part of the solution rather than becoming part of the problem.
To this end, I'd like to ask you a favour: retire any hexayurt which is the least bit moopy, and replace it with something made of more durable materials, things which will last a lifetime, ideally be recycled at the end of life, and definitely, definitely will not moop at all in any stage of their lifetime. This "let us not moop" thing should be obvious, but I get the feeling that people have gotten so used to the "standard hexayurt" that they are turning a blind eye to little problems on those battered corners of a panel, or where tape has failed. Let us put a stop to that. So what to use instead of the standard hexayurt materials? I think there's a good case to be made for sticking to tape, but moving to tapes which do not degrade in the desert sun. They do exist: more expensive, but more durable. Boards could also be fastened with metal brackets, zippers, velcro, and half a dozen other things. Do some experiments, there's 9 months until the next Burn, and this is supposed to be a collaborative R&D project: in the face of trouble, let's innovate. Now let's talk materials. I hear great things about Thermax HD, but nobody seems to be able to source it, and it's not recyclable even if it is tough. Hunter XCI 286 seems to be about the same, but is (slightly?) easier to obtain. Honeycomb Polypropylene looks interesting, I have a few sheets kicking around at home, and there are clearly possibilities. But how well does it insulate? Industrial sandwich panels are available in an almost infinite variety of forms, that's also clearly worth further investigation. Please, make use of the mailing list <https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/hexayurt>, and let's put our heads together and fix this once and for all: a new hexayurt template for the next 10 years on the Playa. -- *Vinay Gupta * * [email protected] <[email protected]> * *http://re.silience.com* <http://re.silience.com> *Free Science and Engineering in the Global Public Interest* UK Cell : +44 (0)7500 895568 Twitter/Skype/Gtalk: hexayurt "In the midst of winter, I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer" - Albert Camus -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "hexayurt" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/hexayurt. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
