Project LOL: Location, Location, Location

Project management and project managers is one of the voodoo sciences of the professional world. They are like opinions everybody has one. This is close reference to the appendage that wants to be the boss. Don't get me wrong there are people within this breed of PM that are really good and understand their purpose but the vast majority are F#@%ing useless. There are protocols within project management that are applicable to project LOL and that is the overarching stages which are as follows:

• Concept - This is where the requirements, stakeholders and scope are defined
• Pre-feasibility - where the various options are explored with an appropriate cost
• Feasibility - where the detailed design and cost is confirmed 
• Construction - the building/development of the project
• Close out - defects of the installation are complete and the project moves on to the user client to use and maintain

For our purposes we are going to combine concept and pre-feasibility stages into one.

• Stakeholders - my better half, looseal (cat), Ginghaan (cat) and myself - major stakeholders. Neighbours and body corporate - minor stakeholders.
• Scope: To create a fruit and vegetable area where the family unit can live ALMOST entirely of. Protein sources and unsustainable fresh produce must only be procured from local organic suppliers

The next step is to determine the timeline for completion of the various stages. I'll take the liberty (my own, how dictator is that!!) of a little more time before I confirm the project milestone dates in a later post.

Plants generally need light, soil and water to grow. All these requirements have and can be manipulated but it is always best to use freely available options. I have identified 2 areas to start my vegetable patch and whether a greenhouse is required shall be determined in the course of this phase of the project.

Refer to the photo above
Site A (Located at the corner of the 2 boundary walls, left hand side of picture)

• Pros
• No height restriction, or blocking of view
• Unused space within the property
• Cons
• Trees will need to be cleared out
• Lowest point in the yard hence, water gathers at this point
• Storm water manhole within the vicinity of the site

Point B (located underneath the window, right hand side of picture)

• Pros
• can be made into a feature
• all pots fit within a 2 x 1.5m area
• Cons
• Roof drainage in the area
• Electrical manhole on the site
• The area is paved
• height restriction because of the window

I also looked at the sun position and how much sun can be received at the 2 sites. This can be determined using the website www.findmyshadow.com. The process I used was as follows:
go to the bespoke shadow plotting

• Select location - Google maps interface
• Select date - since this program gives the shadow cast on a specific date. It would be very time consuming to workout the shadow being cast for 365 days. I picked the middle for every month and noted total daylight hours and total hours cast on the selected sites. I placed this information in Microsoft excel and directly extrapolated to determine light cast on a spot. The table below is the collated information.
• Drew up location taking into account buildings, awnings and fences. The interface is very easy to use and monitor. The drawback was that values inserted are in increments of 0.5m, so if the size of the wall is 1.65m the height that is allowed is either 1.5m or 2m. 
• I ran the calculation for the specified date. If your internet is fast enough all the images for every hour are loaded on the main results page but since my internet was really slow, I opened each image in its own tab and printed from there. The other issue is that when you update the date to be evaluated you have to go back and forward a step for the shadow line images of the buildings to show up. 
• On the whole this program was very useful in determining how much sun is supplied to either site. 

	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec
Number of daylight hours	13	12	11	11	10	10	10	10	10	12	12	12
Number of sun hours in area: Site A	8	8	3	2	2	1,5	1	2	2	7	8	7
	62%	67%	27%	18%	20%	15%	10%	20%	20%	58%	67%	58%
Number of sun hours in area: Site B	9	2	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	1	8	9
	69%	17%	0%	0%	0%	0%	0%	0%	0%	8%	67%	75%

The table above shows total daylight hours and hours of light at the 2 sites. Both sites are on the south side of the building and this is proof by the dismal winter light readings. Summer there is a fair amount of light but it is also not very good. 

Looking at the information above I have to make a few decisions. Which are as follows:

• Use the site with more light throughout the year
• Use both sites, i.e. Site A for bigger plants and Site B for herbs
• Create a green house intervention
• Create a light intervention
• Cost each option
• Choose plants that require minimal light
• miscellaneous options (these might come up between now and the next post)

These are considerations I shall follow up in my next blog post. I hope this has been useful. 

Yours in "natural" living

Total Print out of results of shadow cast on the sites from the website program