The blue knockoff shift pod was an amazing success. It was so easy to set up and take down. It fits perfectly under a flat top shade structure and it stays cool until after noon. Along with my favorite ear plugs, the blue shift pod allowed me to get more sleep than ever before at a burn. I can’t recommend these highly enough.
I brought a notebook this year so I could write down things I wanted to change or bring next time. Here are some of the things I wrote down;
Bring More Fans: I brought a pair of high speed fans for circulation. When you’re under a flat top shade structure, often times the air outside stays pretty cool. Pumping that in can make a world of difference. And it augments the effectiveness of the swamp cooler. I set up two 200CFM fans with ducts to draw air in from outside. These were on a simple thermostat. They automatically kick in when the temperature starts to rise. I estimated that adding these simple circulating fans gave me about two extra hours of cool temperatures for sleeping in. In the future, I think I will double this set up and bring four of these 200CFM fans while ditching the swamp cooler altogether. The swamp cooler is really large and complicated and needs a lot of water and isn’t super effective. Simple circulation feels like a lot of value for not a lot of money and space, in my experience.
Bring A Parasol: I felt like the only person without a parasol this year. I borrowed one from a friend in order to go to the DMV with another camp one day. Having that tiny bit of shade to bring with you on playa makes a world of difference.
Flat Top Shade Structure: This year, my friends and I brought several large pieces of aluminet. Initially, this was just laid over the blue shiftpods. This did not help at all with the heat. In fact, it created lots of noise flapping around, while not helping with the heat. Our tents were right next to a 20′ by 96′ flat top shade structure which formed the core of our camp’s residential area. I experimented with moving the aluminet to attach to the shade structure and then to poles on the other side of our tents. This means that the aluminet was hanging taught a few feet above our tents, rather than touching our tents. This made a HUGE difference with the heat. That said, mounting the far end of the aluminet to poles stuck into the ground was not ideal because they moved around even though they were guyed down. I think a more ideal system would be to set up another small flat top twenty feet from our main flat top, then stretch the aluminet between them, and set up our tents underneath. This would mean a lot of extra shade for super cheap. #lowhangingfruit
Failover Switch: My camp provides power to every tent. This is great, but if you’re relying on it for something like ventilation and then it goes down, you will get hot and wake up. I also brought a large battery, but it doesn’t charge super fast. Using it as my main power source would not work. It would discharge overnight and then not fully recharge in time to use it again. The solution is a failover switch. I have actually already written a proposal for using these for our kitchen refrigerators. The idea is simple; a battery charger and a failover switch both plug into the main grid. The battery charges from the grid (or from solar or wind). Then, the failover switch provides power from the grid to all your devices while the battery is charging. If the grid fails, then the failover switch immediately switches to drawing power from the battery. The devices plugged into it don’t even notice. When the grid comes back on, the switch immediately moves back to drawing power from the grid and the battery begins to recharge. This is especially important for ventilation and air conditioning. One morning this burn, the power failed and the tent quickly heated up to an uncomfortable temperature, waking me up. Never again!
Renewable Energy Sources: With the layout described above, the battery can easily charge off of solar or wind rather than the grid. Then, the switch could be hooked up in reverse so that we first use the stored solar power, and then switch over to using the grid. This would offset diesel fuel costs, and reduce our carbon emissions!
Pens, Sharpies, Calling Cards, Ziplocs: Ziplocs are perfect for storing the many small items which accumulate during the burn. There are many cute examples of calling cards which my fellow campers were giving out this year. Pens and sharpies are extremely handy, especially during strike.
Snacks: My favorite two snacks this burn were frosted strawberry pop tarts and peanut butter filled pretzels. Specifically we had the giant kirkland buckets. I will definitely bring some of these next year.