SUBS #15: HISTORY, UTILITY THEORY AND 14-PORT DISTRIBUTION HUBS!

SUBS #15: HISTORY, UTILITY THEORY
AND 14-PORT DISTRIBUTION HUBS!

*WRITTEN: 2003OCT10

*REVISED: 2009FEB13 =

revised, hexpanded and relEased.

My numbering was ALMOST perfect!

... But as usual, I'm a bit behind ;-)

SUBS HISTORY:

##############

I started thinking about

what led to SUBS in the

early 1980's. ?1982?

By 1983 I had designed

the panel and connector.

By late 1984 I had built some

panels in the foyer of my

penthouse apartment, and

installed a sleeping loft

in my bedroom/office.

It worked fantastic!

It's still my favorite

room I've ever had!

I built more lofts in

other bedrooms.

Way Cool!

At the time I was an

upwardly mobile hopeful

professional wannabe,

who was usually broke.

I met an old guy selling

tomatoes for 29 cents a

pound from a beater

pickup at the farmer's

market in Santa Barbara.

He was hippie labor on a big farm.

I used to visit and we'd talk while I

ate his employer's fantastic Early Girls.

He had a very interesting perspective!

A year later he called me and

said he was out of money so

his flop-house threw him out.

He was on the street with no

place to stay. So I took him in.

Things got really interesting!

He'd been estranged from his

mother for years, and wanted

to get back in contact. He was

hoping for a handout from her.

He had me call his uncle ...

on IBM's International Board

of Directors, who freaked out

when he heard Gilly was alive:

"the lawyers" had been looking

for him for months. He was down

in the basement doing laundry,

smoking cigarette butts he filched

from the ashtray, when I told him

his mother had died, and he was

a millionaire. It turned out to be

about $25 million. He showed me

his first dividend check, for $60K!

A few months later, another uncle

died and made him a beneficiary

of the Houston Oil Trust, worth

about $400 million to him. I was

unemployed and broke. He was

a junkie with no job and more

money than he could ever spend,

and about $2K/hour more

coming in, 24 hours a day!

So we hung out and bullshitted.

We spent hundreds of hours talking

about anything and everything of

interest. Philosophy, history, business,

marketing, cultural differences, whatever.

He was the first person I knew closely

who knew how the system really works,

not what the television tells you. It was

a critic part of my realpolitik education.

He had a private room and bath in

my apartment for about two years,

as well as a tiny rodeo drive sublet

office he seldom went to and I

never saw. He dressed like a

bum and usually stank bad.

He usually ate at McDonalds,

but occasionally went out to

fancy places with droppable

names like Sybil Shepard.

He was an establishment insider. He

played after school at Jay Rockefeller's.

He knew Negroponte from prep school.

He banked at Brown Brothers, Harriman.

He was a life member of the Maidstone Club

He joined the ROTC, army, and CIA.

He was in Vietnam before the war,

planting electronic spy gear.

He had been a wall street hostile

takeover boy wonder and a venture

capitalist.. He was personal friends

with Rajneesh when he was a Poona

coffee-shop guru. He was close friends

with Tim Leary at Millbrook, [as part of the

CIA liaison] and one of the early acid heads.

He was involved in the '68 Prague uprising.

He became a junkie in Bombay, infiltrating

supply networks, and had done some

importing himself. He had grown weed.

He knew this governor and that regulator.

He knew the system inside out,

from the inside, as a member.

He knew the game, and how it

is played by the good old boys.

But he wasn't totally caught

up in it. He dropped out of

New York Society to be

a beach bum in Goa,

hung out with Rajneesh

and then fell into the

homeless underground

as a hippie-junkie, before

money rescued him again.

So he had a VERY

detached viewpoint!

He was a Burnt Out Case who

had already Done Everything.

I was a bright young hot shot,

still eager to make my name.

HE WAS THE PERFECT

TEACHER FOR ME THEN!

He hexploded my delusions about

how things worked while I was

designing SUBS, and hexpanded

my perception of possibilities.

He taught me how the rulers think.

I got his input about how he would

go about developing my industry.

He got me thinking big for real.

After a while, he forgot I took him

in when he was homeless, and all

the assurances of support he made

me, and started treating me like

another annoying peon servant.

So I threw him out. But he had

already transformed my thinking.

I had learned a little programming

in the early 1960's, and by then

had word processing and primitive

30 baud BBS communications.

I wanted to be the Bill Gates

of the SUBS housing industry.

Design, Price and Order your

new building online! Pay by

credit card! Have it delivered

on a truck, tomorrow!, ready to

assemble with unskilled labor!

I COULD SEE IT SO CLEARLY!

My global empire beckoned!

But big loads of shit hit more than one fan.

I went homeless in 1993, which seriously

impacted my Captain Of Industry Fantasies

In about 2001 I was unemployed,

broke, homeless, hungry, and in

pretty lousy health. I was worried about

dying without getting SUBS established,

so I put it on the web to make it known.

A couple years later, in an up period,

I tried to patent it. We did the patent

search to find it IS new, and WOULD

be a billion-dollar patent, *IF* I hadn't

already foolishly disclosed it publicly.

My patent lawyer was *SO* pissed!

I can't really blame him!

But I was doing more design work

around then, and discovered a

unique plumbing fixture which I had

not thought of before, and therefore

had not disclosed to anyone yet.

THAT WAS STILL PATENTABLE!

So I wrote it up, but hung on to it

so I could patent and market it!

That's the basis of this SUBS #15.

Since then, those fans are still spinning!

And some monkey keeps shitting in them!

I'm still semi-homeless, though miracle gifts

and part time job have me eating OK again.

I've given up on the "patent it/it's mine/

pay me or you can't use it" approach.

I'm too old [61] and don't have the cash

or the lifestyle to get a patent or defend it .

I like inventing things and solving problems.

I invented the in-line roller skate in '83 or '84,

but promoting, haggling, arguing and selling

have never been my strong points. I just

invented it; I didn't patent or license it!

... Obviously, someone else DID!

I'D MUCH RATHER WORK

IN THE GIFT ECONOMY!

Maybe I'm just lazy.

With the ongoing collapse of what passes for

civilization among those who know no better,

patents might soon be a thing of the past.

But SUBS will remain useful as long

as people still build houses to live in!

I'd hate to see it lost just because

I couldn't make any money on it.

That would be a shaME!

As first I thought I would make billions of

dollars, and use that to create my fantasies.

SUBS IS A FANTASY I CAN FACILITATE DIRECTLY

BY PUTTING IT *ALL* IN THE PUBLIC DOMAIN,

SO IT'S YOURS NOW, AND NO ONE CAN

PREVENT ANYONE FROM USING IT!

I can't keep it. And that

wouldn't do me any good.

BUT I *CAN* GIVE IT AWAY!

I MIGHT EVEN GET SOME

GOOD WILL BENEFITS ...

WHILE I'M STILL ALIVE!

Maybe even some new

design or consulting work!

Or partnership offers!

You never can tell!

[Until you've done it.]

======================

BUT ONLY IF PEOPLE ARE

ACTUALLY *USING* SUBS!

======================

That's what will make my reputation: lots of

real people living and loving in my designs!

This SUBS #15 and the

forthcoming SUBS #16

complete my core SUBS

system design to date.

There are lots of add-ons and spin-

offs, but they are RELATIVELY minor.

Maybe there's more to come,

but I don't see it yet: SUBS

seems pretty complete now.

Rather than being a

Captain of Industry,

which feels beyond

my reach now, and

maybe even not such

a good idea, *I DO*

have the power to

unleash a global SUBS

"Industry of Captains!"

who all do what THEY

CHOOSE with SUBS, not

what their boss or lawyer

tells them is permitted!

Maybe that's better?

================

THAT IS POSSIBLE!

SO I'LL *DO* THAT!

================

WE'LL SEE WHAT

HAPPENS THEN!

UTILITY THEORY:

###############

In some ways, architecture

is remarkably like biology.

Life has cells.

Buildings have rooms.

One-celled animals are

like one-room buildings:

Their entire exterior surface is

exposed to the environment,

so they interface all over.

As cells or rooms are added, the

organization gets more complex,

As rooms or cells cluster, they

are no longer completely open

to the environment. They are

now partially exposed, and

partially screened by other cells

or rooms. Then some cells or

rooms are completely enclosed,

so they have no direct contact

with the external environment.

As more complex organization

develops, many cells/rooms are

hidden under multiple thick layers

of other cells/rooms. Think of

a person, or a high rise hotel.

One cell by itself easily takes in

solid, liquids and gases from it's

environment, and excretes them

directly to it. Likewise it takes in

light, electricity, and information,

and transmits them too.

One room buildings are much

the same. They have doors,

windows and plumbing to

take in and excrete solids,

liquids and gases. They

receive and transmit light,

sound and other info.

That makes obvious sense.

Biological creatures design

buildings to house and

support biological creatures

... much like themselves!

Buildings are a extension of a

life form: an exoskeleton to live in

that is deliberately crafted, not

just found and moved into like

a hermit crab adopting a shell.

So architecture mimics and supports

all the basic functions of life itself!

As the cells/rooms become buried

in the INTERIOR, a CIRCULATION

SYSTEM develops to continue the

vital exchanges with the external

environment. In buildings we call

these systems UTILITIES.

BIOLOGICAL vs. ARCHITECTURAL CONSTRUCTION

############################################

There are some general differences between

biological and architectural constructions:

*Round vs. Square Pixels

Biology has rounded pixels, which

produces irregular rounded forms.

Architecture has rectangular pixels,

which produce flat surfaces and

right-angle geometry. Cells have

curved geometry with few corners.

Architecture has Square Corners!

*Wet vs. Dry / Ocean vs. Land

Biology is WET, like the ocean,

and the bio-building is done

chemically in a wet solution.

Architecture is done DRY,

and hopefully stays dry!

*Changing vs Static

Life always changes.

Architecture is static.

*Live vs. Dead

Life is spawned, born, lives,

reproduces, dies, and rots away.

Architecture is built, used, and junked.

*Recycle vs. Discard

Life recycles almost everything.

Architecture mostly discards.

*Blurring The Lines: Art Imitates Life!

SUBS makes architecture much

more organic and life-like! You

can start small and GROW your

building while in constant use.

It can change constantly. You

can dissemble and re-use it to

make a completely different

building, or even buildings!

THE "ABC"'s of A

BETTER CONNECTOR:

####################

I made my connectors from a

twenty-foot stick of 6" square

steel tubing. 3/16" was the

thinnest wall thickness they

had in stock then, so that's

what I bought. They cut it

into 6" lengths for me, and I

drilled the four bolt holes in

the faces. Too much work!

There's a better way to do it!

I've seen stop signs mounted

on 2" square tubing, with holes

punched every inch on all

four sides, making it very

easy to bolt on the signs.

That's a perfect 1/3 scale model

of the IDEAL SUBS BEAM for 6"

thick panels! All the holes come

pre-installed! No drilling required!

And because the holes are PUNCHED

in the flat sheet of steel before it is

folded and welded into tubing, they

can be square! That's extremely

convenient, because that allows you

to use a carriage bolt, which has a

square head which LOCKS IN to

a square hole, so you don't have

to hold the bolt on the inside of

the tubing when you tighten the

nut on the outside! WAY COOL!

Maybe they already make this style

of 6" square tubing. If not, they

could obviously do so quite easily.

There will be plenty of demand!

Tubing comes in 20' and 40' sticks,

so you have perfect piers and beams

for any kind of huge construction.

If you cut 6" connectors from it, you

don't have to drill any holes, and you

get three holes per face, not one,

spaced 1.5" apart, down the center

line of the beam/connector.

That should roughly halve the price

of connectors, which were costing

me around $10 each to make, as

punching those holes in hot metal

with a rotary punch is *hugely*

cheaper than drilling holes later!

And having 3 holes along the 6"

face is much better than just one!

That allows you to shift the connector

1.5 inches in either direction along

the duckt. Instead of using two

connectors to support the corners

of two wall panels bolted together,

you can do it with just one! Just shift

it over 1.5" so it supports both panels!

A half-cost connector

that does double duty!

*NOW* HOW MUCH

WOULD YOU

*NOT* PAY?

But wait, it

gets better!

At every corner, there are

3 connectors. One-hole per

face connectors meet each

other at the corner to form

an almost continuous steel

half-cube of 3 ninety-degree

faces. If you use 3-holes-per-

face connectors, you can shift

each connector 1.5" AWAY from

the corner! This is WAY COOL!

This means you can drill a hole

from inside a room, directly into

the 6" [modulus] cube [which is

part of all three duckts coming

together at that corner] WITHOUT

HAVING TO DRILL THROUGH A

WALL OF STEEL! But all panels

are still perfectly supported!

THIS IS A HUGE BENEFIT!

DUCKT PATTERNS

################

Every SUBS room has four vertical

utility columns in the corners, which

can provide utilities to the floors above.

So you can have FOUR KINDS of

utility column in every room of every

building. You may not need that many,

but you always have that option.

For a test example, we can arbitrarily pick

out two mixes of utilities in a building, vaguely

corresponding to those in biological systems, cities,

and other highly structured physical activities.

Ordinary buildings have ducts.

SUBS has DUCKTS!

HOT DUCKT:

==========

POWER [power cables = 60 hertz hum]

HOT WATER [cpvc pipe or pex hose]

HOT AIR [flexible hose, or just the duckt].

[All these can run thru one duckt!]

COLDUCKT:

============

INFORMATION [low or no voltage cables for phone, video, fiber-optics, data etc]

COLD WATER

COLD AIR SUPPLY

AIR RETURN

WATER DRAIN

SEWER DRAIN

ROOF DRAIN

[Any of these, and some multiples]

You could also separate them as

POWER duckts vs. INFO duckts,

or divide them other ways.

This makes it much easier to design utilities:

alternate duckts, providing both to every wall,

keeping the hot from the cold, or the power

from the signal. Much like fluid flow through

a body: send and return, intake and eliminate.

If you have a regular rectangular room grid,

you can further separate by electrical and

non-electrical, giving you FOUR different

kinds of utility duckt IN EVERY ROOM.

Once you decide WHAT to circulate,

designing a building is much like

designing a body, or 3-D chip!

You need both Structure and Flow [of

people, air, water, light, data, power

poop, etc., within the structure].

SUBS lends itself perfectly

to scaling and replication.

For a more advanced example:

a trial four-way utility division:

HOT DUCKA:

==========

POWER

?HOT WATER

?HOT AIR

HOT DUCKB:

===========

*NO* POWER

HOT WATER

HOT AIR

COLDUCKA:

===============

INFORMATION

?COLD WATER

?COLD AIR

?WATER RETURN

?SEWER

?ROOF DRAINAGE

COLDUCKB:

================

*NO* INFORMATION

COLD WATER

COLD AIR

WATER RETURN

SEWER

ROOF DRAINAGE

HOT + LIVE +

COLD + INFO

are the four types

in that scenario.

This allows you to have

both an information only

and a power only access

corner in every room,

as well as both hot + cold

plumbing, heat + a/c, etc.

And yes, of course, you

could mix utilities differently

as in wet/dry, electrical/non,

but the point is that you get

four separate mixes of what

ever you want to have in

each room of the building.

HOT UP

COLD DOWN

These are just some of

the initially obvious choices.

The beauty of the system is,

you can configure it ANY WAY

you like to make it work for you!

Within the room, you still

need to connect the signal

and the power, plus the

cold and the hot plumbing

at your computer or hot tub.

Even if you separate power and

signal, as well as hot and cold

water, you still need to get them

all together someplace, because

I want a computer in my hot tub!

Room-side triangular duckts.

#######################

Run wires + pipes at edges

where the walls meet, in

the corner. A triangular tube

in the corner will hide them

if you like, making a small

right trangle roomside duckt.

This would be a flexible plastic

right-triangular tube with two

equal legs anywhere from 1"

to 6". The top two sides would

be closed but not fastened,

so you could pry it open to

insert wires or pipes. This

puts the clutter our of sight.

You can still have shelving

into the corner, just cut a

triangle off the back corner!

All six edges of the room can

have interior corner duckts of

appropriate size for their use..

The pipes, wires or whatever

can enter through the very

corner points, 8 of them in

every standard room,

because we've shifted all

the steel connectors 1.5"

away from the corners!

14-PORT HUB GEOMETRY

#######################

The supply lines run through the duckts,

and meet at right angles in the common

cube of the three intersecting duckts.

That gives you one port in the center of

each face of the cube. = 6 And the feed

lines to each room run right through the

CORNERS of that same cube at a 45

degree angle to each wall! = 8

6 faces + 8 corners = 14 ports

It's much easier to imagine than draw.

The basic hub body could be either a

sphere or a cube. The ports are simply

threaded connector holes, filled with plugs

if not needed. To add another feed,

simply unscrew the plug, and screw

in a nipple with a valve on it, right

though the extreme corner of the

room, at a 45 degree angle to

each of the three corner panels.

You can do this from inside the room,

though the access hole you drill thru

the very corners of the room.

Just turn the water off first, and

drain the system before opening.

You can plumb 8 rooms at

once with just 8 short nipples!

I thought a 14 port manifold/connector/hub

might be a patentable item, so I looked for

it in Patent Category 137, Fluid Control. I got

nowhere, over and over. Maybe I'm just lost

in the classification system. So I looked for

the simpler 6-way connector, through the

faces of the the cube. I didn't find that

either. So I went to the plumbing store.

They never heard of a 6 way! OR a 5-way!

They only have 2, 3, and 4-way connectors.

They think I'd have to make a 6-way custom.

Maybe the 3-axis 6-port plumbing connector

has not been invented yet either? It's hard

to believe, but so far it seems possible.

If so ... it's in the public domain now!

The 14-port geometry works for any utility.

You can use if for electrical connections

as well as piping. You get all three

electrical feeds in each port: hot, cold

and ground, so it's more compact than

plumbing, which needs separate feeds

for hot, cold, and drain. Twist-lock plug-

in connectors are permanent, but easily

removed and reused with no damage.

Plumbing returns work by gravity,

so you only get 4 in a corner.

This works for threaded or glued pipe,

though threaded pipe has the advantage

of being removable and replaceable

from within the room serviced.

Screw 8 nipples into each hub,

screw a valve onto each nipple

within the room, where you can

easily get at it, and you're set up.

Past the shutoff valves, you can

glue up your pipe if that's easier.

Notice that with this geometry,

we can run a 2" drain pipe into

the room, WITHOUT making a

2" hole in ANY of the panels.

We trim *PART* of a 2" hole off the

corners of THREE DIFFERENT PANELS!

NO HOLES IN THE PANELS!

JUST TRIMMED CORNERS!

Not only is that the least destructive

place to put the holes, but it's the

perfect location to plug into our

14-port hubs! Way Cool!

Multiple Utilities: gas, water, sewage,

power, data, etc. share the same

distribution layout and access.

This also means that many

of your utility runs can be

STRAIGHT RUNS RIGHT

THROUGH THE BUILDING,

with daylight on both ends!

so you can SEE all the

way through from one

side to the other, and

run a string, snake, fish

line, etc. to fix or install.

Knowing what utilities are in

which corner helps you to

lay out the room properly,

with furniture, windows, and

functions using correct utilities.

Of course, you don't have to run all

utilities in all duckts or to all walls now,

but if you do need them the pattern

tells you where to add them later for

easy integration with the rest of the

building structure and systems.

An obvious limitation is that you have

three ducks in one at every intersection,

which overcrowds that six inch cube if you

try to fill each duck with piping. But if you

are using the ducks for air flow, you

don't want them crammed full anyway.

And if you use the 6" junction cube for a

pipe distribution hub, only one will fit, and

not too much else beside wires and air.

14-port hubs are very elegant,

especially for high-density use,

but they are not the only option.

You could run continuous wires or

flexible piping like pex tubing from

your source directly to applications,

using 2, 3 or 4-way connectors to

branch distribution "normally".

You could run electrical to plug-ins

located just OUTSIDE that 6" cube,

in the duckt run, so just wires would

be in the modulus cube space.

It all depends on your needs.

We can supply all the utilities, without

having ANY pipes or wires running

INSIDE the wall panels, so we don't

need to modify our panels at all, and

we don't need to open up the wall

panels to get at the utilities inside:

BECAUSE THERE AREN'T ANY!

All the wires and pipes are in either

the square external duckts, or

the triangular internal duckts.

WAY COOL!

A building should be able to grow, like

a tree, while continuously functioning!

SUBS TRANSFORMS ARCHITECTURE FROM

COMPLEX RIGID ARTIFACTS TO SIMPLE ELEGANT

RECTANGULAR MALLEABLE PLASTIC GEOMETRY,

... IMITATING LIFE ORTHAGONALLY!

Using simple standard components,

SUBS allows you to express YOUR

personal art, by what elements you

put together where to do what how.

Without any years of

architecture school!

Happy Building

... and Living!

O

--- )

\

Bill Dur = SUBS@net-prophet.net

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