BUG Weather Station

Status Update
11-2-2017

Christi McKnight
Shane Buck
Marina Predovic
Background

Bronco Urban Gardens (BUG) is a food justice outreach program that

simultaneously acts as an educational tool for increasing garden awareness,
ecological literacy, and nutritional health information.

We took on a project at their hub, Gardner Academy, which is an underserved K-5

school in Santa Clara County, located approximately 10 minutes driving from
Santa Clara University. They cater primarily to underserved minority students,
many of which are non-native english speakers.
The Problem and Motivation

Lisa Martinez, our project partner and Gardners liaison with BUG, wanted to
increase outdoor education by improving the schools garden and its interactive
components for the students.

She particularly emphasized the need for a weather station in order to reinforce
the climate coursework that the students are learning about in their classrooms.
This project would be great solution to bring the curriculum outdoors allowing
students to be able to learn about the weather in an interactive way.
Initial Design
For the initial design, we consulted
websites such as Pinterest and
Instagram for ideas
Lisa showed examples of her ideas
Design included
Rainbow heading
All five 5 instruments
Weather station
Fun facts about the weather
Final Design

We added a lockbox to deter

theft or vandalism of
components
Tweaked design to contain
fewer words
Simplified the layout of the
weather station
Decreased the overall size of the
board
Key Results

- Purchase Materials
- Paint
- Install Posts
- Mount Backboard
- Install Lockbox
Completed Tasks

Educational materials have been ordered

Thermometer
Barometer (Delivery may have been taken, need to reorder)
Anemometer
Sundial
Rain Gauge
Structural materials have been purchased
4x4 posts
Backboard (Home Depot - free if youre willing to look through
their discarded materials)
Lock
Additional wood for Lockbox
Completed Tasks

Posts installed and concrete poured

Sundial painted
Tasks Remaining
Tasks Remaining

Purchase / create letters, rainbow and shapes

Paint backboard and letters
Build and mount the lockbox
Labels for educational materials (in English and Spanish)
Mount the backboard to the posts
Install sundial
Blocking Issues

Finding a lockbox that is weatherproof

and the right dimensions
Preventing vandalism and theft
Finding time to get to the site and install
the backboard
Barometer is missing (delivered late, still
needs to be picked up)