One word summary of 2017: HOT

It was way too hot this year to do much of anything. Over 100 degrees (F) in the shade.

  • Green granola bars are moop bombs and explode everywhere.

  • We need a rebar hammer to avoid burning out all of our campers. electric demolition hammer converted to rebar drill with a "ground stake adapter". No more than 10cm should be exposed above the ground, which requires far more pounding than anyone wants to do.

  • Shade teams need a "boot camp" to learn the proper techniques and tightening procedures
  • Knot tying should also be taught, either The Eye's "Two-half hitches" or my suggested "Prusik".

  • Water bar was an ok success, although only slightly better than last year.
  • We talked with the hack-a-cola group about their carbonator and learned some lessons.
  • Should pre-chill the water before carbonation
  • Should use rigid lines for the post-carbonation, otherwise flex will allow CO2 out of suspension
  • 50-psi is fine, 100-psi causes leaks
  • Everyone at the bar needs a training course in detecting failures
  • No matter how many times I said all joints must be sealed with teflon tape, the long water hose was not taped and we had to dig it up twice to repair it.
  • Luckily the giant puddle made finding the spot easy...

  • Shade between RVs worked well even in the wind storm. We bought the cheap, no-grommet, netting 60% black-shade fabric, $60 for 20x20. To attach it to the rope we rolled the edges and threaded bungies through. Seemed to hold up
  • The finest showers in the land worked well, but required lots of time and material to build. How was the grey water handling?
  • Closing the D shade structure made it difficult for the water truck to reach the tank and complicated water refills.
  • The palette rack frontage was difficult to secure and the stairs were still too damn tall.

  • The smaller palette racks worked well, but switching them out took way longer than expected. Not a great choice to do all of the containers in camp at the same time -- delayed other builds and we really had to scramble to meet our 23:59 Sunday deadline.
  • Hook magnets were amazing in the container. We could have used another dozen.
  • USB rechargable magnet lights were also great in the workspace.
  • Bluetooth speakers made build week musical until the sound was setup. $50, 20W worked great.

  • We had our first tour of D-Lot. Once again, NO WILL-CALL, although it is not as bad during early build week.

  • Bare electronics screwed directly to the wood worked great again this year.
  • 5V 12A sealed power supplies worked great again this year. No failures year-to-year.
  • Helios bars survived -- 23/24 tested fine and the one hard a ground-handling incident that required a wire to be resoldered.
  • Horizontal bars are too climbable; vertical aspect ratio looks better anyway
  • Horizontal bars look too much like a bodgea sign; let's stick with vertical or radial
  • USB soldering irons continue to be amazing, Sal Ammoniac Tinning Block cleaned them nicely
  • Pinkbox gloves are nicely sized
  • battery tester was invaluable and a worth while addition to our tool box
  • Toughbooks continued to be a good choice
  • The Zoom recorder had lots of problems when it loses power and required some hacking to recover a few DJ sets from the filesystem.

Burning Man 2017

Last update: November 8, 2020