Help! Tractor plan way too heavy!

Well I just had a bit of a mental break through, thought it may lead to nothing. I thought I'd share anyway. Go read something else if you hate math
smile.png


It occurred to me suddenly, out of the blue, that the big thing I want to do is reduce surface area in the house--less surface area = less plywood = less weight. Of course, being the dork that I am, it took me this long to remember basic algebra. Remember those bizarre fencing problems? You know the type, Farmer Bob needs to fence two acres, fence is $2 a foot, what are the dimensions of the field fenced by the cheapest amount of fence? I was good at math and those still seemed weird to me. I guess they actually had a real life use!

Anyway, the answer is always a square (unless you're not forced to have straight edges, in which case it's a circle, but I digress). Squares give you the biggest area for the smallest perimeter.

I didn't realize how dramatically true this was until I did the numbers out for a squarer setup that fit my area needs. The "house" part alone drops from needing about 100 square feet of plywood to needing about 79, and that wasn't even a perfect square (because I'm not making a chicken house that's 5.29150262213 ft on each side, that's why
wink.png
) The framing doesn't drop as dramatically, but it's not square, either. A square inside a square is hard to do in a usable way.

At this point it becomes somewhat awkwardly wide (6'), but I'd already given up on using it to let them patrol the squash bugs during growing season (taking a couple of the ladies for a spin in a dog cage when necessary seems a better idea for that).
 
Last edited:

New posts New threads Active threads

Back
Top Bottom