# 🏜️ The Field Guide — Tested Numbers & Hard-Won Wisdom

Everything below came out of really planning and building a 20–30 person Burning Man camp — much of it learned from **our infrastructure mentor**, a veteran who runs big-camp infrastructure and reviewed our designs. Names removed, lessons kept. Feed this file to your assistant and it starts smart. 🐢

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## 💧 Water

- **Plan 2–3 gal/person/day** — drinking + cooking + washing.
- The math: `people × days × 2–3 gal`. Our camp: ~25 people × 9 event days ≈ **630–950 gal**. Add build week and strike crew separately.
- Store in food-grade containers (275-gal IBC totes are the workhorse). Know your **fill plan** — playa water-delivery services exist; book early.
- Distribution beats hauling: tank → pressure pump → hose splitter with ball valves → kitchen + fill station.

## 🔥 Propane

- Burner ratings are *demand*; tanks have *supply limits* (vaporization rate). Rough delivery ceilings in desert heat:
  - **20 lb tank ≈ 90–110k BTU/hr max**
  - **40 lb tank ≈ 150–185k BTU/hr**
  - **100 lb tank ≈ 300k+ BTU/hr**
- A dual high-output burner alone can want ~150k BTU/hr — a 20 lb tank can't feed it flat out. **Size tanks to the cook line**, not to what's easy to carry.
- Heat shielding (stainless or cement board on standoffs) behind ranges. Extinguisher per cook station + fire blankets.

## 🧊 Cold Chain

- Three-tier pattern: **chest freezer** (manual defrost, bulk reserve) + **fridges** (daily use) + **insulated produce box** (veg doesn't need a fridge, just cool-and-dark).
- Insulation tradeoffs, learned the itchy way:
  - **Polyiso (foil-faced)**: great R-value, but cut edges **shed fibers and crumbs = MOOP**. Tape/seal every edge if you use it.
  - **XPS foam**: hot-knife cuts clean, no fibers — but it **UV-degrades** and **burns more easily**. Keep it shaded and away from the cook line.
- All cold equipment lives under shade. Direct playa sun will beat any compressor.

## 🚿 Greywater & Showers

- **Greywater never touches the playa.** Not a drop. Design containment first, plumbing second — containment is the hardest part of any shower build.
- **Float switches: separate from the pump, self-weighted**, mounted so rising water triggers the pump *early*. Integrated pump floats fail in shallow basins. **Practice the float-switch setup at home** — playa is not the test bench.
- **Buy double the hose you calculated.** You will re-route.
- **Mark waste lines** visibly (tape/paint) so nobody ever cross-connects grey and fresh.
- Keep hoses attached to their pumps for the whole event, and carry a **hot spare pump**, ready to swap.

## ⚡ Power

- **No electric heat appliances** on generator/shared-grid camps — no electric kettles, griddles, space heaters, toaster ovens. Heat comes from **propane**; electricity runs compressors, fans, lights, and toys. One rogue kettle can brown out a whole camp grid.
- **10-gauge extension cords** for the backbone runs; save thin cords for the last few feet of small loads.
- Know your amp budget and who's on it. Meter the big loads before you trust them.
- **Village interchangeability:** standardize on common parts — pump models, cam-lock fittings, hose sizes, connectors — with your neighbor camps. When something dies at 2am, a standardized neighbor can swap you a pump in minutes. Communal Effort is also an engineering strategy.

## 🎪 Shade

- **Aluminet** knitted shade cloth cuts radiant heat dramatically and lets wind bleed through — the playa standard for a reason.
- **Rate every anchor for 70+ mph gusts.** Not average wind — gusts. If an anchor's rating is a guess, it's a failure waiting for Thursday.
- **Paint stake tops orange** (or flag them). A flush steel stake is a broken toe and a trip hazard at night.
- Guy lines get flagging tape too. Your neighbors' shins thank you.

## 🍳 Food Safety

- **Separate handwashing station** from dish washing — outside the kitchen, always stocked. This is the single highest-leverage food-safety move in a camp.
- **Two-compartment sink minimum** for dishes (wash / sanitize); three is better.
- Keep the cold chain intact end-to-end; sanitize surfaces; keep raw and ready-to-eat apart.

## 🗑️ MOOP Prevention

MOOP = Matter Out Of Place. Leave No Trace is a *design input*, not a cleanup chore:
- Prefer materials that don't shed: avoid loose glitter, feathers, raw-cut fiber insulation (see polyiso note above), fraying tarps.
- Cut/drill over a tarp; magnet-sweep after metalwork.
- Carpet/ground cover under kitchen and workshop zones catches the small stuff.
- Every bin has a lid. Wind is the world's most enthusiastic MOOP distributor.

## 🚚 Ship-Priority Thinking

The scheduling insight that reorganized our whole build:
- **Whatever ships first gets built first.** Sort the build queue by *departure date of the vehicle it rides on*, not by how fun or "almost done" a project is.
- **Don't over-polish late-shipping items** while early-shipping ones sit unfinished. A gorgeous kitchen trailer that misses the truck helps no one.
- Set a **ship-ready date** per project and track to it. "Done" means strapped in the vehicle.

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*Tested on real dust. Fork freely. Gift forward. — Terrible Turtle Camp 🐢🌺*