The CCAT pedal power lab was located in the basement workshop of the CCAT house. Bart Orlando began building pedal powered devices there with the assistance of HSU students in the mid - 1990s. Students who worked on pedal powered projects with Bart received class credit in the engineering courses. In 1998 Steve Sakala, Daniel Poten and Bart Orlando co-authored a grant proposal to the Society for Sustainability and Innovation. The grant requested $10,000 for a variety of pedal power projects including the conversion of the basement workshop into the pedal power lab. (Instead of granting the full sum requested, $5,000 was given to CCAT with which to complete all the projects in the grant proposal. Other grant projects included the pedal powered concert generator and the pedal powered tv/vcr.) Grant funds were used to purchase salvaged old growth dug fir beams which were milled with the assistance of Blue Ox Mill Works in Eureka, CA. This wood was used to frame the cabinets shown above. The doors and side walls of the cabinets were made from sheets of compressed wheat straw, an alternative to using particle board. Particle board contains carcinogenic formaldehyde and should not be burned in a woodstove or fireplace because of the poison smoke given off. However, the left over scrap bits from this cabinet project could be burned for heat in a wood stove of fireplace because wheat straw board contains nothing but wheat straw - compressed under super high pressure. Particle board also off gases poisonous vapors at room temperature whereas wheat straw board does not. Travis Boland, Peter Williams, Johnny Gary, Matt Rhodes and Bart Orlando each worked on the construction of the cabinets. The CCAT pedal powered workshop has been dismantled to make way for the new Behavioral and Social Science Building. Donations towards future CCAT pedal power projects would be greatly appreciated.
