HUB Housing Cooperative

Since last time, we’ve planted the sedum on the roof!   Yesterday was had a good crew up on the roof, cutting 6 spots in each bag of rocks (that’s 215 bags of very small rocks, for those counting at home), then planting one cute little sedum seedling in each cut spot.  I think there were five kinds of sedum.  In any event, the roof is now fully planted, and we had a flat or two left over.  Hopefully we can find a spot for them for the winter so we can fill in any spots on the roof that don’t make it until spring.  And now for some photos:

Early in the cutting process

More cutting (watch out for the edge!)

Seriously, no falling!
More photos.

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So it turns out 13,000 pounds of very small rocks are just as heavy as 13,000 pounds of soil (though their volume is bigger, meaning we can grow more in them).

Dan writes:

Thanks to everyone who came out, especially Mike Phippen for bringing the crane!  We managed to get all the materials up on the roof and in place, including all the “paks” of rocks.  We still need to cut into the bags and actually plant the plants, but the really hard (and it
was really hard!) work is done.

Here are some pictures from the big day:
http://s486.photobucket.com/albums/rr221/DanKorn/?albumview=grid

Some sample photos:

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Dan wrote yesterday about our 13,000 pounds of rocks (very small rocks, in lieu of and lighter than soil) being delivered.  I’ll let the others post what they learned.  What I learned:

• With heavy bags, two people lifting goes more than twice as fast, and makes me a lot less tired.
• Wheels are good.  After we unloaded the truck, we had to get the 215 bags (what’s 13,000 divided by 215?) from the street to the courtyard.  We used a wheelbarrow (3 bags per trip) and a dolly (5 bags per trip optimal perhaps - sometimes overloaded, I hope not permanently damaged).
• More people is better.  I think having two people loading, two people unloading, and one person pushing each wheeled vehicle would be ideal, if we had enough people.  We started with 4 people so had two people on each vehicle, both loading, both walking to the other end, both unloading.  This works.  Adding more people can mean less walking, and adding more people means everyone can get a rest.  The pushers rest during loading and unloading and the loaders and unloaders rest when the pusher is active.  Add a 2nd vehicle into that grouping could also work.  Maybe we should have done that.  We had two vehicles.  Didn’t think to split into one pusher for each one and a loading team and unloading team.

Next steps.  Well, now we need to get the stuff on the roof and installed.  There seem to be two ways to do this, a crane and a pulley.

With the crane, we’re going to need to bring the bags back out to the street, and stack them neatly on pallets.  Once each pallet is on the roof, it needs to be unloaded and each bag moved into place.  See above for what we learned about moving them, both on the ground and on the roof.

With the pulley, we may be able to do this from the courtyard, so less distance move per bag, and potentially lifting one bag at a time.  Again, wheels on the ground feeding the pulley and wheels on the roof taking the bags to where they need to be installed.  And plenty of people to avoid injury.

So, who wants to help?

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We took delivery of our green roof supplies today: some plants, a few rolls of moisture barriers, and 13,000 pounds of rocks.  It’s all in the courtyard now; we’re hoping to get it up on the roof and installed soon.

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