29 DECEMBER 2011 Meeting

The BioAusable Team met at Plattsburgh State at our lab and washed sand for the biosand filters. Other teams met and worked on their assignments.
To wash sand, the members first needed to separate the gravel and non-sand particulate matter. They took some sand and placed it in a plastic kitchen food colander. Warm water was added to the sand and the sand was agitated by hand. The sand and water went through the colander into a bucket below and gravel and rocks remained in the colander. The gravel and rocks were placed in a separate bucket. The process was continued until the collection bucket was filled with sand.
Small glass jars, and then later, larger buckets were filled part way with the filtered sand. Warm water was added and a top/lid placed on the jar/bucket. The sand was shaken for about 30 seconds and the water was drained out. The cleaned sand was added to the 55 gallon drum main filter.

We had 8 feed sacks of sand to clean. We cleaned 1.5 bags (feed sacks). It was a so tedious process. The lab sink was only big enough for one pair of workers at at a time so members took turns.
Also at this meeting, while the fabrication team was cleaning sand
Art team: finished work on logo--combining ideas from both prototypes
Personnel: updated the roster, learned some formating skills, learned how to update the MIT site
Video/Photography team: took numerous pictures and videos of the work
Testing team: selected herbs to research for adding water to eliminate e.coli
Writing team: talked about what was needed.
Web team: unveiled the new website


Present at the meeting were:
Caleb, Tianza, Jesse M., Alexandra, Austin, Emma, Liam, Mercedes, Grace, Gideon
(an additional assistance from a member's sibling- Andre)



(posted by G.S.)