Week notes #7
[These weeknotes started in late 2021 in the lead up to the release of WikiHouse Skylark, as a weekly update for our WikiHouse Slack community. Follow the link to find out more about the community and how to join.]
Firstly, thanks to all who’ve been in touch about website testing. We are going to start testing the week after next so I will contact you individually in due course with more info.
Talking about the website, did anyone notice we took the old WikiHouse website down a few days ago? As we prep for launch we are adding more content to the new website and I want to tell you about a new section you will notice when we launch, our new services. As I’ve mentioned before we get many requests and enquiries from people asking for our help with their projects. Up till now (as you know!), file sharing has been complicated and not very user friendly. This is something we are changing with Skylark - our hope is that people will be able to easily access files and guides and easily give us feedback too. And in that spirit, we also want people to easily ask us if they need our help at key stages in their project - whether it’s the design stage, checking, manufacturing or installing. We have packaged these services in a way that makes sense based on the stage a project is at - and also based on our own experience of when people will need our help the most. As we are a small team, most of these services will be UK based to start with- it really is a bit of an experiment, we are excited to make these little “packages of help” available to people but don’t know whether we will be overwhelmed by enquiries, or not. We’d love to hear what you think of them once we launch (and apologies in advance that we just don’t have the manpower to offer them worldwide, yet).
On testing news…
Gabriele was in the lab yesterday taking pictures of the last test carried out at Edinburgh Uni (big kudos to UoE team carrying out the testing- they are doing a fantastic job!) and this is what happened…
the big lintel (2.4 m span) was tested,
the failure load was around 60 kN
and the failure was very ductile, i.e very desirable and safer than traditional beams.
…so all very encouraging news! You can see some pics below- also check out the video and see that lintel crack! (Apparently, as I found out yesterday, had that beam been made of traditional solid timber, it would have been fragile and would have broken instantly when reaching the peak load. I am fascinated by this)
Have a good weekend everyone!