It has roughly been a year since Hana and Kirill left for Denmark. Necils is in Hong Kong, finishing his Cal Poly summer abroad program and going to Japan within the next week.

While we were away, so much has changed at the garden; all of the land is now planted and it’s very green. It was great to be back.

Today we signed the engineering and building contracts with Brad Mimlitz of Rammed Earth Builders and Peter Jarratt, paying the $1000 towards the engineering cost from the kickstarter fund.

While we were away, we arranged a percolation test, which was done for $1000, also from our kickstarter fund. It was done at a discount rate by Clarence Jiang, GE, QSD, Salem Engineering Group, who we would like to thank for the work. The report is viewable here: http://kirillvolchinskiy.com/huerta_del_valle/_documents/tests/3-216-0486%20Percolation%20Testing,%20Community%20Garden,%20Campus%20Ave%20and%20Maitland%20Ave,%20Ontario-1_copy.pdf

We needed the percolation test to aid the design of the drainage for the amphitheater, and design the grading plan. Kenny Reyes, EIT, Assistant Engineer from Blair, Church & Flynn has been doing the work on the grading plan pro-bono under the guidance of Cordie R. Qualle, PE MCE. We would like to thank both for devoting many hours to the project.

We would like to thank Russell Gulke, PE, LS (Cal Poly, Pomona 1989) from WestLAND Group (Group, Inc. Land Surveyors – Civil Engineers – GIS) for providing a survey for the site (a $3,000+ job) pro-bono for us.

We would like to thank Christopher Nielsen for spearheading the structural engineering for the shipping container structure.

We would like to thank Mohammad Shaikhsaheb for working on the electrical plan and solar system design pro-bono.

Finally, we would like to thank Hessah Alzayed for doing the lighting design for all of the structures pro-bono!