This project turned out extremely well. I felt like we addressed a very real and present problem within the school and although our solution kept changing, the water collection and data really did turn out good. I feel like our data effectively showed that if we installed permanent catchment systems around campus, it would actually be utilized and productive.
I learned that leadership is very hard and stressful but it also makes you care about the project more because it in a way becomes your baby. I really cared about doing this project right and I feel like it showed in all of my work. I also learned that no matter what you do, there are just some people that can't be helped and don't want to be helped. I'm a very caring person by nature and once I stopped caring about things I can't control, I was definitely less stressed. Overall this was a very good project and although we experienced some ups and downs, I felt like this project effectively prepares us for college and real life situations. Mahalo for everything Mr. Blake.
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This project has taught me a lot about the possibilities if sustainability and how it could be applied to our school to make it a more efficient water usage school. I learned that water is a very important part of sustainability and everyone and everything relies on it, i learned about the efforts that should be made to conserve the water and what steps can be taken to better and efficiently use and save water. What i enjoyed about this project was the challenge to fix something on campus and expect results. I also liked how we were able to collect data and implement a long term prototype based off the success of our small scale system. What i didn't enjoy about this project was the limited amount of time that we were given to implement a system, i would've liked to see more time so that we would have the time to make a better quality system that would actually have lasting impact when we leave. Overall i have really enjoyed this project and highly recommend this to upcoming classes.
I personally felt like our presentation went really well. Although we went over our allotted time, I felt like we included everything that we needed to and had an overall successful presentation. We didn't write out an exact script because we all felt that we knew the content pretty much by heart and we just assigned different sections such as Intro, Problem, Solution, etc. We presented from our website and it was very different than all the other projects. Everyone else for the most part had powerpoint which were kinda boring but I felt that our website was very well put together and visually pleasing. Unfortunately we had to present without our 4th group member Kehau, because she was unprepared and did not practice for the presentation at all. But besides that I was pretty proud of our presentation.
This day was quite the nerve wrecking one. We were all getting really nervous however we had good faith that we would do perfectly fine because we had a wonderful understanding of our project and what were doing. We were more worried about our nerves getting the best of us. We knew that we would be fine in explaining we just had the jitters and didn't want to mess up more so a speech struggle than a struggle with preparing the actual information.
After finishing up the prototype and collecting data, we cleaned up our system and distributed what water we could. After collecting all the data we plugged in the data into a table and graph, and the results were staggering, we were able to collect more than 180 gallons of water! this is unbelievable of his successful we were in a better of days. Im glad that we were able to prove that our project was successful and that our hopes for a long term system is possible and doable.
Finally able to get more water distributed through out campus where we transported more than 10 gallons of water with the help of our group. We were able to collect water from our holding barrel and water a whole māla. It took a 5 minute walk uphill carrying 4 gallons of water at a time, but we made it happen with laulima, for plenty hands make for light work.
As we come closer and closer to our presentation day, my group has been working on finalizing our project and creating our presentation. In preparation, we have been collecting the waters in jugs and reusable containers to help water our outdoor systems. We have considered and thought about other ways our water could go to use. We talked to another group who are planting various plants about letting them use our collected water to grow their crops. My group continues to collect as we are winding down to present.
Today was a work day so we worked on the aquaponics systems by cleaning out the filters and weeding where needed. We also decided to put our catchment water to good use by watering the māla there. We took gallon sized jugs, filled them up 2 at a time, and carried them up the ʻAkahi stairs to the māla on the side of Konia. We made two trips to carry water to the māla and we watered all the plants in the māla with only 4 gallons of water. We still have plenty of water and are planning on repeating this process from now until the end of the school year just to see if the rain water we collected is enough to sustain the māla for a certain amount of time.
Yesterday and today took us by surprise because we put off removing the buckets from under the gutters which resulted in them catching more rain when it rained last night. Monday was supposed to be the last day of data collection but because we left the buckets out, we now have more water than intended. I had free time after school so my brother and I stayed and emptied the buckets. When dumping the buckets into the large bins, it started filling up really fast. Eventually, after we kept pouring water into the bin, the one with the black cover started to leak out of a hole in the side. We didn't notice the hole until water started pouring out. This resulted in us having to scoop some water back out with a bucket and leaving it out.
On the other side of the stairs we had to leave 3 buckets under the gutters as well because there was no room in the wide bin either. We currently have 2 gallon jugs to transport water and are working on finding more recycled ones that we can use. We have to get rid of this water because if it rains again, it will begin to overflow. Chays and I had a free during period 7 so we decided to go collect data from the water catchment. Chays stayed in the dorms over the weekend and observed that it did indeed rain Sunday night. The new buckets that we put out collected A LOT of water. We noticed that some buckets were knocked over and barely had any water in it, which will affect our data collection. Another thing that affected our data was the fact that in a bucket that collected a lot of water, there was food floating around as well as on the bottom of the bucket. We ended up having to pour out and waste the water because we deemed it unusable. We concluded that the food found in the bucket was rice and that someone most likely threw it in just to make trouble. Although some of our data was ruined due to tipped buckets and food, the buckets that we added the previous class really made up for it. Both buckets under the 2 drains adjacent to Midkiff were filled to the brim and contained 10 inches of rain (its max.) and most likely would have caught more if the buckets were larger. The large bin that we put under the over-flowing gutter caught 10 inches of rain, but because it's much wider than the others, there's much more water. We emptied the 2 buckets by Midkiff into this large bin because it's more convenient than walking it across the lawn to the other buckets. As of right now, one of our trash bins in filled to the top, one is 3/4 filled, and the black wide bin is filled about half-way. We have so much water and we decided that today would be the last day we take data. Anymore water would make it that much harder to transport the water to the different māla on campus.
We're very satisfied with the amount of water we were able to collect in such a short amount of time and will now be focusing on transporting the water to the different māla on campus to see how long the water can last and supply them with the water they need to survive. |
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