Solar Decathlon 2011

This coming weekend wraps up the 2011 Solar Decathlon. If you're in the DC area come check it out.

For those of you unfamiliar with the Decathlon, 20 colleges from around the world have all built small homes that run on solar power. They're judged on Architecture, Market Appeal, Engineering, Communications, Affordability, Comfort Zone, Hot Water, Appliances, Home Entertainment, and Energy Balance. Plus visitors get to vote on their favorite.

All pictures can be enlarged by clicking on them.

Clicking on the names will take you to their part of the DOE Decathlon site. They have short videos there that talk about the house. They call them a walkthrough, but more often than not they talk about the house and their philosophy without giving you the expected tour.

Ohio's house. I can't remember what I wanted to say about it.

New York's house is designed to be broken down into pieces that will fit in a freight elevator and be reassembled on the top of the taller buildings you'd find in New York. They have taken into account the high winds you'd get up there. But this only cleared for buildings 4-5 stories tall. For the REALLY tall buildings they'd have to tweek it a bit more and get approval from ... from ... from whoever approves these kinds of things.

The California team got a lot of traffic. Mostly from people who wanted to know what the hell they were thinking. This blanket can pack down to a remarkably small box and be installed by 2 people in a day. It's easy to repair. It doesn't take damage easily, but more easily than you'd like. And, yes, bugs and mice will almost certainly move in.
It's not completely a bad idea. Just not for a house. I can see it being used on construction sites for the trailers they set up as an office. Those things are hard to control the climate in. This would help a lot and wouldn't be a permanent solution.

I love these houses with the V shaped roofs. They hide solar panels well and make capturing rain water easier. In this case they're running the water through a wetland simulation to clear out pollutants before you use the water for your garden or whatever. This particular roof also has a green roof that you can just barely see.
Maryland's house is in the lead as I write this.

I liked China's house partially because it's much like some of my own recent sketches for a house. It's made up of several shipping containers that radiate out from a central hub. Each of the 3 arms is two containers wide. You can see them better if you enlarge the picture.

Canada's turtle house is designed so that some of the panels will be angled most efficiently over part of the day. As the sun passes through the sky they'll all work, but one will always work better so you're not getting the bulk of your power only at noon.

Tennessee I believe.

Florida's house has an interesting form of storm shutters. You see them used as house shades in this picture. The side closest to the house comes down and the outer edge pulls in. With that done you have enclosed the house in metal shutters that protect you from hurricane damage.

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New Jersey's house is made from poured concrete. It was shipped to DC in 20-something pieces. While nobody has actually done the math, it's suspected that this house weighs more than every other house in the Decathlon put

New Zealand's house is meant to be sort of a vacation house, if I understand them right.

Illinois.

Belgium built a highly customizable house. From the outside it's a cube. Inside it's like something you might expect from Ikea. You buy the parts and assemble the floor plan however you like it. Pictures next week should clarify what that means.

Virginia's house will be moved to the Deanwood area of DC as a Habitat for Humanity house. Deanwood is a poor and rough neighborhood. An odd little reading nook will become a staircase that leads to a second level that will be put in place on the chosen site.

I don't have much to say about Middlebury's house. It has high ceilings so the heat can rise out a vent at the top and draw in cooler air. As you'll see next week, it has a nice garden in the kitchen window.

Purdue tried to build a house that looks like an actual house. They're also the only house that has walls of standard thickness. Just plain old 2x4s in the walls. Which means that the insulation they use I could use in my house. I always get frustrated when I find that the only way to get the kind of insulation used in Decathlon houses I'd have to double or triple the thickness of the walls.
This is also the first house I've seen in all 5 Decathlons to have a garage. Some would have a car port, but never a garage.

Appalachian State has a number of interesting features. The big wooden shelter uses solar cells that generate electricity on both the top and bottom so it gets power from light that reflects back up. To the left you can see a detached office or, as Yummy would want, a nap house. There's also an outdoor shower and sink which I fully intend to show you next week. On the house you see a brown area with a grey thing to the left. There's a window behind the grey thing. It slides back and forth depending on how much sun you want in the house. The brown area and the covering for the detached office are bark. They say the bark actually holds up for decades. You can read more about it at http://barkhouse.com/.

Massachusetts, I'm so sorry. I don't have a good picture of the full house. This picture shows the front of the house and how they did the solar panels. They're showing how you can set up a solar array around an existing house and still make it somewhat attractive. If you pull out you can see how the wood is in the same size and shape of the house, but offset by a few feet. It shades the roof from the sun and keep the rain off of you while you try to get in the house.

I'm still missing some houses.
There's a second Florida house that uses a lot of corrugated metal on the inside.
I'm not sure Hawaii managed to make the trip. The house shown on their page isn't familiar at all.

Blue boxes like this littered the site. Instead of needing batteries or hydrogen crackers and fuel cells like they've used in previous years they set up a micro-grid. The houses were set up like neighborhoods and each neighborhood fed into one of these boxes. The boxes were all connected with each other and into the city power grid. As they fed excess electricity into the grid the electrical meters turned backwards. So the houses all functioned more like they would if you made similar changes to your own place