B4: Week 5 Project description

For the final project, I will be examining the various water management systems in my senior design company and how they can be integrated with other systems in the building to provide a fully integrated building. The various systems we have on site include a dewatering system to lower the groundwater table below the depth of the basement, which provides water on the order to 15,000 gallons per day. This water is used in several of other systems, such as the potable demand (~1,000 gpd), powering an anaerobic digester on site (~3,300 gpd), and providing watering needs to existing greenhouses on site (~2,000 gpd). Additionally, a grey water collection system will be utilized in order that recycles the water from sinks and showers, in order to reduce the demand on the building and load on the city sewers. Finally, all black water from the toilets will be sent to the anaerobic digester.

For AE-510, I will be exploring further options than what my senior design project goes into. For instance, what sort of control systems would be possible to constantly monitor the groundwater yield? The implementation of a computer monitoring system could measure the groundwater flow each day and determine times of drought (lower groundwater) and times of excess groundwater (such as during the spring thaw). These numbers could be cross referenced with another constant monitoring system such that a cost-benefit analysis of a cistern on site to store any additional ground water generated in wet periods to offset the increased need created in dry periods. The numbers generated from such a system would ideally be analyzed by the building engineer and presented in a simple form to understand to the building owners, to determine any changes that could be made over the building's lifespan, which will help the building adapt over time to changing occupancy and uses.

Comments

Timothy Perdue is writing a paper on how structural health monitoring systems can be integrated into existing buildings to monitor their long term health. I think this is a really cool idea, since structural health monitoring really tells a lot about a building that is not immediately available to see. I took a course last term about SHM and it was largely just a broad overview of the topic. I look forward to seeing what discoveries he makes.

Grigorios Papadourakis, Rikki Moore, and Taylor Castonguay are writing a paper concerning 3D printing of concrete. I think this is a really neat idea, since I always thought 3D printing needed to be made out of plastic of some sort. Modern concrete, with the advent of plasticizers and improved strength capabilities, can be formed into some very artistic shapes. However, they are always limited to the shape of the forms. By 3D printing the concrete directly, I could see some rather innovative and artistic shapes come into being. Not sure how useful it will be in the field over cast-in-place concrete for simple stuff like slabs and footings, but for the more artistic applications I'm excited to see the results of this paper.