High utility bills could make anyone appreciate the University Solar Decathlon Team's self-sufficient home that will go to national competition Monday.
Displayed for the public in Crozet at a send-off yesterday, the home produces enough solar energy to heat and cool it's interior.
The house also can provide running hot and cold water with enough energy left over to power an electric car.
Heating and cooling devices allow the house to use weather and natural light to do much of the same work done by gas power and temperature-control systems in traditional homes.
The solar house, nicknamed the "Trojan Goat," is a self-sufficient home of about 800 square feet that is designed to support the typical lifestyle of two people.
Third-year Engineering student and team member Adam Ruffner said the team chose "'Trojan' because it's surrounded by a rainscreen that will be lifted in Washington to reveal what it is, and 'goat' because it's fully self-sustainable."
The team will leave Monday to compete in the first-ever Department of Energy Solar Decathlon on the National Mall in Washington.
After a setup period on the Mall, the house will be unveiled Sept. 26.
A house trailer will move the unit from its construction site in Crozet to Washington. The house will sit beside the solar homes of 14 other competing universities, which include Carnegie Mellon University, Virginia Tech and the University of Colorado-Boulder.
"There's 10 different events based on the architecture and engineering of the house," said Dan Pearce, research scientist at the Engineering school and member of the Decathlon advisory group.
Architecture Prof. John Quale, who is the architecture advisor for the team, said the house is designed to meet its own energy needs and make use of reused materials.
"One of the focuses was reclaiming materials and using them in creative ways," Quale said. "For example, the copper on the outside is from the roof of someone's home. Shopping panels from warehouse crates were turned to flooring materials."
The house also includes recycled material from the Rotunda.
"This summer, they were replacing the water membranes at the Rotunda and the paver stones were taken up," said Dave Glick, a recent Engineering school graduate who worked on the project. Before the solar decathlon team claimed them, the pavers "were going to be used for the back porch of one of the contractors."
The floors of the house are bamboo, and the house includes a lot of birch, both of which are wood species that grow quickly and are replenished easily, Glick added.
The idea for the house began as a collaboration of higher level Architecture and Engineering school classes taught by Quale and Computer Science and Electrical Engineering Prof. Paxton Marshall. The project has taken over two years from initial brainstorming to construction.
An original team of 12 Architecture students collaborated in spring 2000 to produce schematic designs for the competition house.
"We started by studying very specific individual household activities, like taking a shower or burning a fire," said Steve Allen, a 2001 Architecture school graduate who was in the spring 2000 design class. "We measured the motions of the activity very specifically. Then we designed a room for that activity."
Students from last year's combined Engineering and Architecture class, "Photo-voltaic Design and Construction," refined the schematics, built full-scale mock-ups of the house and eventually began construction.
The project was a collaboration among students, engineers, architects, business sponsors and local contractors and building experts who contributed knowledge and donated materials.
"We've had a lot of volunteers from the school," Pearce said. "I know there were 70 architects and 40 engineers involved in the actual course work, and there were easily three times that many volunteers" helping the construction process.
Quale said the design of the house involved much debate, but that ultimately the original design team's ideas endured.
"It's been an organic discussion," Quale said. "Everyone's been very articulate and respectful."
Architecture school graduate and first design team member Bolanle Adeboye agreed that the design remained very similar to the original.
"It's almost exactly the same as what we started with, it's very faithful," Adeboye said.
After the competition, the team hopes to place the house in the University's Piedmont faculty housing community as accommodations for visiting faculty. It also will remain a part of Engineering and Architecture schools' curricula.
"It's a prototype but it's also a laboratory," Pearce said. "This will have a long life with future Architecture and Engineering students learning how it works."
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