• 11 Posts
  • 33 Comments
Joined 3 months ago
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Cake day: January 27th, 2026

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  • Why do our hospitals look so bleak? We could have greener hospitals like Khoo Teck Puat or Ng Teng Fong, both in Singapore

    Khoo Teck Puat hospital as an example:

    Designed to be ‘forest-like’, water features with aquatic species, and plants that attract birds and butterflies were introduced. Greenery extended from the central courtyard to upper levels of the buildings and down into the open-to-sky basement, creating the impression of architecture deeply enmeshed in a garden. At the upper levels, balconies with scented plants bring the experience to the patient’s bedside.

    Total surface area of horizontal and vertical greenery is almost four times the size of the land that the hospital sits on. In addition, 18% of the hospital’s floor area account for blue-green spaces and 40% of all such spaces are publicly accessible

    […] Common areas such as the main lobby and public corridors were specially designed for optimal natural ventilation thereby reducing the need for mechanical ventilation and energy consumption. By orientating the subsidized ward tower to ‘capture’ the prevailing North and South East winds, an optimal wind speed is achieved which would provide adequate thermal comfort for the patients.

    […] It is also a serves as a tranquil communal node where the local community can attend public lectures, exhibitions or participate in educational programs organized by the hospital.²

    The energy-efficient design reduces energy costs by 50% and provides 40% of the floor area with the potential for natural ventilation.³

    Video format about it for those that prefer it:
    https://inv.nadeko.net/watch?v=Jw1b_SviPyU&t=275s
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jw1b_SviPyU&t=275s

    You probably won’t be able to redesign/retrofit everything, but perhaps just a little bit more green instead of only concrete?





  • I’m probably biased in saying this, but I’m a fan of the red and green handbooks (handboeken Rood or Groen) from Amsterdam, but they are only available in Dutch, if you don’t mind using a translator to help you

    It goes in depth and there are a lot of pictures and illustrations. It is based on the PDF alert! Puccini Method, which tries to make designs that are user friendly and accessible

    You can find them here

    A summary can also be seen here with the main principles

    The two handbooks contain the technical specifications of the policy, including drawings, technical details and lists of materials.

    PDF alert below!

    1. Red Handbook covers pavements, street lighting and street furniture.
    2. Groen Handboeken covers the correct planting of greenery in the city, including trees, perennials, grasses, shrubs and wadi gardens.



  • how it handles the load exceeding capacity

    As in what happens if you plug too much stuff that it exceeds your solar production?

    I’ll use mine as an example, but it might be different with different models and configurations:

    Inverter can handle up to 10kw
    If solar production is at 5kw, and home is demanding 7kw, in my case, I have it set up as to draw the remaining 2kw from the battery, if battery is depleted, it will draw 2kw from the utility company

    If home demands more than 10kw that the inverter can handle, it will trip the internal inverter protection or a circuit breaker leading to it




  • Unfortunately they usually do it on farmland around here, when they could easily go the agrivoltaics route. They would only need to raise it a meter or two and let the sheep roam around doing the trimming for them

    Depending on location, it would have been cheaper to have those posts raised/reinforced in the first place instead of buying and hauling all that gravel





  • They are already doing that, they even have a playbook on how to try to protect them, but apparently, “Physical protection is a set of structural measures that do not guarantee the safety of protected objects. Solutions do not exclude blast load and shrapnel impact.”

    Inside Rosneft’s Secret Drone Defense Blueprint: How Russia’s Oil Giant Plans to Shield Its Refineries – and Why It Will Fail

    Solution What It Is Rosneft’s Own Admitted Weakness
    Cable barriers around tanks Cable/net mesh (40×40 cm) wrapped around storage tanks on pipe stands “NOT resistant to UAV shrapnel”; only protects against multirotor drones
    Scaffolding cages Modular metal scaffolding erected 5m above tank roofs “Insufficient volume of scaffolding to protect the Company’s facilities”; “high cost”
    Shipping container walls 20-36m high walls from stacked 20/40-ft containers with cable infill at 40 cm spacing Not yet pilot-tested; requires thousands of containers per refinery
    “Tent” canopy over tank farms Overhead cable-mesh tent using containers as structural supports (21m central mast) “Difficulties during firefighting”; “high snow loads”
    Tower crane mast cages Repurposed crane sections forming 4-pillar cage around processing units, cables at 1m spacing Each unit requires individual engineering; relies on surface foundations or guy-wires
    Three-barrier column protection Layer 1: cable screens 1-1.5m out from platforms; Layer 2: nets (40×40 mm mesh); Layer 3: kevlar/aramid wrapping In case of detonation, destruction is inevitable
    Cable fencing for pump stations 6mm cables at 500mm spacing on outrigger brackets Only designed to destroy drone airframe — does nothing against the warhead
    Reinforced concrete panels Reinforced Concrete wall panels replacing sheet-metal wind barriers at pump stations Only covers pump stations — the narrowest, lowest-value target category