Solar Decathlon - early review part 2

Back to the Solar Decathlon houses.

Kentucky is being rather secretive about their house. This is rather odd since they've apparently used it to compete in two other solar home competitions.

Boston has a good looking house. You should really go to their site [link] for a look. Partially sheltered decks allow winter sunlight in but not so much summer sun. There's a water catching system, a privacy wall, and a trellis wall. The foundation is supposed to readjust for different angles of ground at whatever competition site they visit.

Louisiana has some construction pictures up. I can't tell much from them other than the fact that the roof is higher on one end than the other. I've seen someone try that in the past. It looked good.

I like the look of Santa Clara's house. I can't tell much about it other than it uses a lot of water and is in an L shape. It just looks neat.
They've got a webcam, too. [link]

Missouri always puts on a good show. The slats you see let in the winter sun, but not the summer. It sounds like one of the more interesting things they'll have will be the home automation system. Last time it was the solar water heater integrated into the solar power collectors.
Webcam! [link]

Minnesota seems to be going for a barn look as well.
What? I'm 16 houses in! We're a bit low on unique features to blather about.

Wisconsin has a V shaped roof. This has some advantages and disadvantages. The big plus is that it hides your solar panels so your neighbors won't bitch about how ugly they are. It also moved all the rainwater to just two points so it can be easily directed to a useful purpose.
On the downside, it runs all the water to a channel in the middle of the house. I'd imagine that it's more prone to leaks than a peaked roof.

Canada seems to be departing from their usual super insulation strategy. This house has a shade that goes around the outside of the house and can be raised or lowered in sections as desired.
Frankly, I preferred their house than only lost 0.5°F overnight with the heat off.

Virginia Tech offers up nothing in the way of photos, architectural drawings, or even floor plans. What you can see is their list of expenses. [link]

And we wrap up these preliminaries with Germany, the 2007 winner. They had some slick stuff, but I'm not sure I would have given them first.
I can't tell what their house will look like from the outside, but you can see the cutaway. It appears to have what so many others have missed - storage space. I believe that's what the space overhead is. Now that I think about it, it could be the bedroom, too. I don't see one elsewhere.
The site is in German, but you can get to Google's translation link

In a few days I'll put up some of my pictures from previous Decathlons.