D Floating town in Louisiana Done 1.8
Gizmo, you mentioned a project in Louisiana, that could use recycled plastic. What is that?
I wondered, Traveler, how long it was going to take you to ask about it.
I met Father Lafitte at Cursillo, a Catholic retreat, and we have stayed in touch. His parish is in Southern Louisiana and is threatened by loss of land. His church will probably be gone in 5 years. I don't know if you have seem the pictures, but it is incredible how much land mass has been lost.
Yes, I have seen the satellite photos. I don't think it is a solvable problem, levies, combined with dredging canals for oil drilling and sea water rise, is pretty unstoppable, replied Traveler.
Perhaps, Lafitte was reading about floating gardens made of water hyacinths and bamboo and closer to home for him, the well developed Chinampa, and the Uros people in Peru. Then he read the story about the floating church in Scotland, Strontian, turns out there are several of them.
OK, I know about floating gardens, there is a small scale project in Puyallup for rain runoff, roots hang down out of the garden, purify the water, pretty neat.
Well, I started thinking, why not a floating town? I did some research and it has been done in a number of ways, most commonly with a bunch of boats tightly clumped together and I build boats.
Traveler shook his head in the negative. The biggest reason for land loss in Southern Louisiana is hurricane damage made possible by loss of wetland, when, not if, a storm comes those boats will be reduced to matchsticks.
Unless they were designed for hurricane resilience, Gizmo said thoughtfully. What are the main threats of a hurricane, ocean surge, wind, and tornadoes that are spawned. If the design includes farming, floating gardens, the gardens can face the oncoming surge, serve as a wall for the places people live. Wind is the least of the problems, build low and strong. Tornado, well a direct hit is devastating, but build them big enough they can't easily be lifted, tie them together as rafts and have storm shelters in the boats where people live or work.
Look there are two resources, carbon that needs to be sequestered and plastic that needs to be recycled that could be perfect for this. We don't have to start with a whole town, instead a few barge sized gardens, a couple house boats, and a floating church, because one thing we want to be clear about, this aid is coming in Jesus's name. In the early days, if a hurricane comes, you evacuate. Later, when there is critical mass, at least some people may elect to ride it out.
Traveler scratched his chin, he had caught the reference to "we". OK, what are you thinking?
The basic houseboat design is two pontoons with a low structure on top. You have already started creating carbon fiber building panels for the Circle neighborhoods Wonk is developing or refreshing. We will design around those: walls, doors, windows, you have a shell. The pontoons, that's where the plastic comes in. Black plastic is hard to recycle and not popular. I have been experimenting with pulling fiber through with perpendicular rods to "grab" the molten plastic. It works, but it was a very non-appealing gloopy string, strong, but ugly. But if we wrap it around a carbon form, with waterproof compartments built in, it doesn't have to be pretty, it will be under the boat.
We build the pontoons near a carbon source, maybe even diverting wood and greenmass from a land fill. They will actually pay us to take the black plastic. Slap the shells on them, tow them to the township, said Gizmo.
And the gardens, asked Traveler?
Two pontoons and a box to hold the dirt. Solar desalinization, compost area, and you are in business, we could even have a few micro parks with bald cypress, they are dying off due to the salt water incursion, Gizmo was nodding his head. We hook the gardens together to provide some shielding for the residential and office boats. Won't be enough in the early days, but if this works, a line of 3 or 4 of them should provide a lot of protection. Every five houseboats are starred around a utility barge, sewage gets converted to compost, desalinization, addition solar wind energy collection. It will look like a cross from the air.
That's seriously cool, said Traveler, who is going to live on the houseboats?
The people that attend Father Lafitte's church, they have already been talking about it. It's a chance to apply the Circle principles with a Christian flavor.
And the floating church, said Traveler, you have really thought this through.
16 houseboats in a 4 x 4 arrangement with a double floor to hold them together. We tow them separately, bolt them together, redo, the inner walls, here, it would look like this inside, chapel in the center, classrooms on the outside. You in, asked Gizmo?
Wouldn't miss it for the world.
I wondered, Traveler, how long it was going to take you to ask about it.
I met Father Lafitte at Cursillo, a Catholic retreat, and we have stayed in touch. His parish is in Southern Louisiana and is threatened by loss of land. His church will probably be gone in 5 years. I don't know if you have seem the pictures, but it is incredible how much land mass has been lost.
Yes, I have seen the satellite photos. I don't think it is a solvable problem, levies, combined with dredging canals for oil drilling and sea water rise, is pretty unstoppable, replied Traveler.
Perhaps, Lafitte was reading about floating gardens made of water hyacinths and bamboo and closer to home for him, the well developed Chinampa, and the Uros people in Peru. Then he read the story about the floating church in Scotland, Strontian, turns out there are several of them.
OK, I know about floating gardens, there is a small scale project in Puyallup for rain runoff, roots hang down out of the garden, purify the water, pretty neat.
Well, I started thinking, why not a floating town? I did some research and it has been done in a number of ways, most commonly with a bunch of boats tightly clumped together and I build boats.
Traveler shook his head in the negative. The biggest reason for land loss in Southern Louisiana is hurricane damage made possible by loss of wetland, when, not if, a storm comes those boats will be reduced to matchsticks.
Unless they were designed for hurricane resilience, Gizmo said thoughtfully. What are the main threats of a hurricane, ocean surge, wind, and tornadoes that are spawned. If the design includes farming, floating gardens, the gardens can face the oncoming surge, serve as a wall for the places people live. Wind is the least of the problems, build low and strong. Tornado, well a direct hit is devastating, but build them big enough they can't easily be lifted, tie them together as rafts and have storm shelters in the boats where people live or work.
Look there are two resources, carbon that needs to be sequestered and plastic that needs to be recycled that could be perfect for this. We don't have to start with a whole town, instead a few barge sized gardens, a couple house boats, and a floating church, because one thing we want to be clear about, this aid is coming in Jesus's name. In the early days, if a hurricane comes, you evacuate. Later, when there is critical mass, at least some people may elect to ride it out.
Traveler scratched his chin, he had caught the reference to "we". OK, what are you thinking?
The basic houseboat design is two pontoons with a low structure on top. You have already started creating carbon fiber building panels for the Circle neighborhoods Wonk is developing or refreshing. We will design around those: walls, doors, windows, you have a shell. The pontoons, that's where the plastic comes in. Black plastic is hard to recycle and not popular. I have been experimenting with pulling fiber through with perpendicular rods to "grab" the molten plastic. It works, but it was a very non-appealing gloopy string, strong, but ugly. But if we wrap it around a carbon form, with waterproof compartments built in, it doesn't have to be pretty, it will be under the boat.
We build the pontoons near a carbon source, maybe even diverting wood and greenmass from a land fill. They will actually pay us to take the black plastic. Slap the shells on them, tow them to the township, said Gizmo.
And the gardens, asked Traveler?
Two pontoons and a box to hold the dirt. Solar desalinization, compost area, and you are in business, we could even have a few micro parks with bald cypress, they are dying off due to the salt water incursion, Gizmo was nodding his head. We hook the gardens together to provide some shielding for the residential and office boats. Won't be enough in the early days, but if this works, a line of 3 or 4 of them should provide a lot of protection. Every five houseboats are starred around a utility barge, sewage gets converted to compost, desalinization, addition solar wind energy collection. It will look like a cross from the air.
That's seriously cool, said Traveler, who is going to live on the houseboats?
The people that attend Father Lafitte's church, they have already been talking about it. It's a chance to apply the Circle principles with a Christian flavor.
And the floating church, said Traveler, you have really thought this through.
16 houseboats in a 4 x 4 arrangement with a double floor to hold them together. We tow them separately, bolt them together, redo, the inner walls, here, it would look like this inside, chapel in the center, classrooms on the outside. You in, asked Gizmo?
Wouldn't miss it for the world.
Comments
Post a Comment