Week Five: Pairwise Excel Sheet & Concept Finalization

Today, in class, we weighed our different concepts using an excel sheet embedded with formulas from Dr. Moseson. These formulas are essentially set up as a GPA calculator and aided us in deciding which concepts are the best overall. In this spreadsheet, the team's proposed specifications were given a weight compared to every other specification. A “0” shows a specification of lesser importance to the column heading, a “1” signifies equal importance, and a “2” means the specification is more important. This helped mathematically determined the order of importance of each specification. Then, each concept was rated on a scale of one to five for each specification. Our concepts were further segregated in two sections, rainwater catchment and irrigation. Figure 1 shows the subcategories of each and their final calculated "grade".

Figure 1

The rainwater catchment concept of gutters halfway up the side of the greenhouse was chosen as the catchment system; however, the proposed design of an irrigation system may change as to what degree of control the farm director, Allison Blansfield, would like over the irrigation of the housed plants.

Another topic of discussion this week was the proposed materials of gutters.The two central ideas are PVC piping or aluminum gutters. This will be discussed in greater detail in the team's meeting later this week.

Unfortunately, our adviser, Dr. Moseson, informed the team that we will most likely not get the chance to implement our design due to the fact that the greenhouse for which we are constructing the irrigation system is not yet in place. Instead, our focus will be to create a model of our proposed design and to explain why we chose the design that we chose.