MelwanIzemHawkenProjects2021

When my group members and I were thinking about potential project ideas, we thought that it was really important to create something that would both have a long-lasting positive impact on Hawken and something that involved physical construction. As we are in the midst of a pandemic, many of us (ourselves included) can feel especially stressed, and would just like to relieve our minds somehow. Many of us try to play sports with our friends, but cannot due to COVID-19 regulations. We thought that it would be extremely beneficial to both the faculty and student body to have some sort of outdoor recreational activities that would cultivate physical exercise and social interaction without being worried about not following CDC COVID-19 guidelines. We then narrowed our project options to either calisthenic equipment similar to those in the Metroparks or a spikeball court. When evaluating the pros and cons of each project, we thought that it would be significantly more difficult to carry out a...

  After entirely removing the dirt with the confines of the designated spikeball court, we sought out to place the weed barrier. Although strange at first glance, the placement of a weed barrier is essential for maintaining the longevity of the court because it will firstly provide a between the dirt and sand, and will, in turn, mitigate the growth of invasive plants such as weeds. Furthermore, the implementation of a weed barrier would allow the water within the sand to actually seep through, and would both prevent the sand to be wet for long periods of time and would also minimize the formation of water puddles on the surface of the court. We proceeded to place the weed barrier along the bottom and edges of the hole, and nailed them down to ensure that they would stay in place. After inspecting the nail placements and joining tarp and dirt, we then used the rubber edging that we had ordered to encapsulate the court to ensure that it maintains its structural integrity. As we had a...

  After finalizing the spikeball court schematics and getting approval from both Mrs. Dyer and Mr. Looney, we began to site the space. Before we excavated the dirt, we elected to use yarn to outline the circumference of the court, and spray-painted it to make sure that space was properly defined. As we were expecting it to rain, we then began to snake the circumference of the court by removing cutting and removing the edging to make sure that we would we be removing dirt from the correct area. Furthermore, we were afraid that the rain would wash away the spray paint, and wanted to make sure that the border would be both defined and intact. We then asked Mr. Baker if there were some sort of tool that would expedite the process of removing the dirt within the designated area. He then recommended that we use an edging machine ( a machine tool with a revolving cutter, for dressing edges, as of boards ), and was kind enough to actually rent one on our behalf. This tool would be especial...

After meeting with Mr. Lucas for approval for our project, we were again directed towards Mrs. Dyer, the Hawken Upper School director, for her agreement on the terms of our project. When reversing our presentation, my group members and I forgot to account for the radius of the spikeball net (3ft radius) into the overall serving radius of the spikeball court (9ft), and concluded that it would decrease the serving radius to 6ft. This was a grave mistake on our part, and resulted in us to actually create two separate models, the 9ft radius model and the 12ft radius model, to provide Mrs. Dyer the most options for optimizing spikeball play. As spikeball requires a 6ft serving distance, the 9ft model would force players to sreve at or after the sand pit barrier, and could potentially result in a greater proportion of tripping and injurites. Contrastingly, the 12ft model would provide the player with an ample 3ft distance from the border when serving, and could mitigate the rate at which pla...

  Going into the second, my group members and I sought to create schematics of the spikeball court and to research the materials required for our project by contacting various companies to gauge the overall pricing and feasibility of buying and transporting materials. After meeting with Mrs. Zilenski, we immediately started to refine our schematics by adding a sign to inform people unfamiliar with spikeball by detailing the purpose of the court and how to play using their full range of motion. Furthermore, we tried adding as much detail as possible into our diagrams to give the viewer the most accurate depiction of our project, and believed that it would spark tremendous interest among both the administration and student body.  We initially contacted construction companies such as Sidley Sand to catalog and compare the sand per ton prices and gathered all the rest of the pricing information off of other sites such as Home Depot and various companies. We then compiled all of th...