Day 11 - Event Conclusion
Final day of the U.S. Department of Energy Solar Decathlon, 2015 — Irvine, CA
Sunday, Oct. 18th 2015
The last day begins with a light-hearted prank to ease the nerves.
All Team Breakfast Assembly
Today marks the end of the Solar Decathlon and public tours, so the event organizers planned a breakfast for all the decathletes! After the assembly was over, they still had half the amount of food that they had prepared. I think they prepared enough to cover every teams decathletes, but the majority of each teams students were not present. Most of the teams assembly team had left before the competition had began (like Team Alfred's), and because the awards were already handed out the day before, most of the members from various teams stayed in bed to catch up on some sleep before the last day of public tours.
A well earned surprise!
More awards! I seem to have lost my image of the awards (and the SD website never posted and photos from Sunday). All teams were given awards for all competition sub-categories such as Comfort Zone, Commuting and Appliances. All teams also were also handed a wooden finalist plaque. Originally there were to be twenty teams in this contest, the 6 that dropped out obviously did not finish the contest. I do however have pictures from the event patrons as they received their awards. These people showed exemplary ambition in their related areas. These being communications, construction, public volunteering and rule keepers, to name a few.
One of these award recipients was Joe Simon, competition manager of the U.S. Department of Energy Solar Decathlon 2015. Joe was always riding around the Solar Decathlon Village on his bicycle, goes to and from different teams in order to keep the contest running smoothly and correctly. I spoke to him on several occasions while we were both waiting for something.
Joe Simon would later come to Team Alfred's house to trade us shirts and to also buy my golf tee sculpture, Opposing Forces.
Last Day of Public Tours
Today the Alf House seen over 2,000 last minute visitors!
We also ran out of our original 5,000 printed pamphlets.
The day was filled with great visitor feedback and some group photos.
Wrapping Up
At 2pm or so I began pulling out my art crates from under the deck to begin packaging up my unsold works to be shipped back to New York. I ended up selling four out of my eight works on display; none of the ceramic works sold. After I packaged my work, and the other teammates packaged the ceramic wares, Avery took what was left of our students to the airport for our return trip home.
At John Wayne Airport we got past security and waited for two hours for our flight to New York City. After a long six hour flight we made it back, only to wait 5 hours in the airport for our one hour connecting flight to Rochester. It was a long grueling trip home, as none of us slept much on the plane rides nor on the cold hard airport floor in Newark. In the end it was totally worth it for the amazing experience we all had the pleasure of being a part of.
There is not a whole lot more to be said than what has already been said. It was a crazy week filled with stress, drama as well as happiness. For a small community in the hills of western New York, this solar house has become a testament of our school's knowledge, skill and ongoing courage to strive for a better tomorrow.
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Day 10
Final award ceremony of the 2015 Solar Decathlon!
Also the second to last day of public tours.
Saturday, Oct 17th
Engineering and Overall Award Ceremony
Today the award ceremony would announce the scores of the Engineering juried walkthroughs, thus allowing for final scores to be calculated and overall awards to be delivered. Hovering around 10th place this morning, Team Alfred was not very hopeful for anymore awards. However the days speakers would make all of the teams realize that the overall goal of this competition is to better the world and not necessarily to win.
Today's Speakers
Introducing today's speakers was the City of Irvine's Mayor, Steven S. Choi. The final speaker was Dr. David Danielson, assistant secretary for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, U.S. Department of Energy. Dr. Danielson was perhaps the most inspiring speaker of the whole decathlon, in my opinion. He covered topics such as global warming, clean water and alternative types of clean energy while relating these points to all of us decathletes. He changed the mood from the event being a competition to more of a global collaboration. This ideology allowed teams to be more supporting while the awards were delivered.
Overall Winners of the Solar Decathlon, 2015!
Third-place overall winner California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo. Second-place overall winner University at Buffalo, The State University of New York. Overall first place winner of the decathlon went to Stevens Institute of Technology.
Cal Poly's home was quite nice, but their team had a lot of funding so most of their students had no hand in the construction of the systems and their actual home. Buffalo's design aesthetic was not for cold weather, as some of you might think.They went with a greenhouse- the first-ever greenhouse at a solar decathlon actually. Stevens was the first and only team to actually win first place awards for every sub-category of the competition; a no-brainer that they would end up being awarded first place. However just like Cal Poly, Stevens also did not have to do a lot of their own construction of their home.
The overall consensus is that you can win a lot of awards, not just by having a large dedicated team of staff and students, but also a lot of money to make sure all aspects of your house are on point. Alfred had 100-150k of funds, and only a couple students and faculty that were really dedicated. We also heavily relied on nothing but students for the entire project, from start to finish.
After the awards it was another day of public tours.
Another average day of public tours.
We had over 1,500 for the day! I also managed to sell another work of art in the process.
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Day 9
Team Alfred gives yet another enthusiastic day of public tours!
Friday, Oct. 16th 2015
Award Ceremony Number Two
Todays awards at the 10am morning award assembly were for Communications and Architecture. These competitions were based off of judged walkthroughs of our homes over the past few days while we did not have public tours. Yesterday we won the third place award for Affordability, however today we did not place in the top three for either category.
The start of the award assembly began with a speech by Dr. Hongxi Yin who was in charge of the Solar Decathlon China 2013 (that Avery Sandler attended). He showed a powerful video highlighting that Solar Decathlon and announced formally to us all that they are now making preparations for Solar Decathlon China 2016 — an international competition.
All of this was interesting, but what came next was the most impactful. He boasted how the Chinese have the second largest economy in the world, but they also are the worlds top producer of greenhouse gases. I was astonished to hear him blatantly talk down on his country. To paraphrase him, he then said "The competition helps students in China to become educated to save this earth." It's great to see and hear of so many places and cultures actively investing in the next generation. This was such a great way to start off the day knowing that we all would end up having more waves of students coming through our house that were looking for information, and high fives.
Quick note on our HVAC System
Our air system is an average sized system that is both affordable and convenient. It is located in the attic space that is accessible by the pull-down ladder in the master bedroom. Here in the warm California weather, our 4-5kw HVAC system recycles warm air from the house and cools it back down with the AC. I am no engineer, but this is How I have been described our system. The Energy recovery ventilator (ERV) provides fresh air into the system from outside and the air ventilator takes recycled air from the house. These two air flows are combined and cooled further to generate a cool living space. The same process would go for cold weather if you were seeking to heat the home.
Guided Tours
Because this event is so large the decathlon offers special commodities to visitors. The most interesting one being the free guided tours. Volunteers in yellow shirts take small groups of people around from house to house and give them a quick three minute overview on each house. This allows people that are unfamiliar to the event to become oriented to what is available so they can then go back to homes individually that they find the most interesting.
Averaging over 1,000 visitors a day!
Today was nothing but tours. Most of the day today we ended up going to the self-guided tour style and just had visitors ask us questions as they came. Touring for several hours a day just wears us all out quite quickly. This is because touring is usually large groups of people at once that we end up trying to convey information to in a fun, interesting and inspiring manor. Even with these self-guided tours we still needed a minimum of 3 students in the house for questions and delivering general information to.
Several interesting events took place. The first and most simple is I finally sold one of my artworks! Secondly the School of Applied Technology Dean Dr. Craig Clark joined us in public tours and overall support to the team. He brought a school flag with him so we were finally able to put up both of our school flags. Lastly our team decided as a whole to formally protest the Marketability score from yesterday, as well as the Architecture score (in which our school placed 13th out of 14 houses). If we win our argument we will receive a better score. If we loose the challenge we will loose ten points from the possible hundred points of that contest. Well apparently we submitted the Architecture protest too late, but the Marketability did get in on time. Our team lead Avery Sandler had to go speak to the panel while the original judges were present to defend our school from the poor scores that we received. Apparently he made some good points, but e will not find out until tomorrow.
Day 9 Wrap Up
While awaiting our potentially new scores we have to look at our overall rank of 11th place. It is not last, but it is certantly not what we were all expecting to be sitting in right now, so close to the end of the competition. Tomorrow there is only a few more points avalible from the Engineering awards. After that we will be told the overall U.S. Department of Energy 2015 champion. We will be nowhere near first at this point, but it would be nice to get back down to 8th or so. We all put forth so much work, and are recieving such amazing feedback so we hope to walk away with the recognition that we believe we deserve.
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Day 8
Team Alfred wins an award!
Thursday, Oct. 15th
Team Alfred is awarded Third Place in Affordability!
There are so many amazing homes here at the Solar Decathlon that I really was not holding my breath when going into the award ceremony this Thursday morning. Our team worked extremely hard to get here, myself included, so it was a huge relief to know that no matter what happens next that at least we achieved this national honor. Team Alfred's team leader Avery Sandler gave a thank you address to the audience of other teams and we happily went to our home to prepare for the public tours to resume at 11a.m.
The Calm Before The Storm
The start of the todays public tours was nothing less than a mad house. Among hundreds of visitors there were also thousands of school children here on field trips to learn about the various aspects of our homes. We were glad to welcome them into the home to educate them using our home.
Competition Strategies Continue
After a few hours the crowds died down and the sun came out. Having the sun come out in California, most of us would automatically start thinking about the general heat, water and sun screen. However here at the Solar Decathlon everyone thinks of it as energy production, and this directly relates to how the teams must act in order to conserve energy consumption in certain areas in order to use them for others. This all has to deal with how points are accumulated of course, but it still is quite the spectacular feat to watch unfold.
All of the team houses have different systems in place that they developed or purchased, so no two homes use energy in the same way. The ways to save energy can be simple. In previous days some teams were driving their electric cars 5MPH with their headlights off to conserve energy when they would later have to charge it. Saving energy can also come at a cost, however. If we decide to save some energy by turning our AC down we could then loose points in the end for bad humidity and temperature readings. One interesting concept, admittedly I do not think I would have thought of on my own, was that teams can in fact shut off breakers entirely when not using things like the hot water heater. Small steps accumulate to large effects.
We have made a lot of mistakes, but we are still not last place. By the end of today we will be in 9th place, overall. More awards and points are coming over the next days, so anything can happen!
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Day 7
During another day of tasks, I shift the focus to the art & design of Team Alfred.
Wednesday, Oct. 14 2015
The morning of Day 7, Team Alfred moved up to 7th place!
Today was a pretty laid back day. Day 6 was the final day of jury walkthroughs, and because public tours do not begin until Day 8 we were left with more scoring tasks. All of these tasks were the same as previous days.
Team Alfred's solar house from above.Seen here are 40 monocrystaline solar panels, solar hot water system and solar dryer system.
Today's blog will focus on the art and design that fills the Alf House.
By the end of the Solar Decathlon I would end up selling half of my artwork on display. On display I had binders for artist contacts and artwork descriptions. I also ended up going through 400+ personal business cards as well as dozens of ceramic artists cards.
Team Alfred Communication Design
I created all of Team Alfred's design work from start to finish. I started on the project by creating the teams logo in the spring of 2014 while I was still a student of Alfred University. The rest I created now after graduation. Some of the other team homes had more public materials in their homes for self-guided tours, however what you see below is all Team Alfred had. We were on a budget and all this design for the team was commissioned by the school.
Rachel Allstadt and Jessica Dewielter ceramics
These two ceramic students from Alfred University were kind enough to create ten sets of dinnerware for Team Alfred to use in our solar decathlon dinner parties. They did not wish to include individual artist statements, but instead an exhibition statement.
Exhibition Statement:
“This dinnerware set is a collaboration designed and produced specifically for Alfred’s Alf House. Rachel Allstadt and Jessica Detweiler are young ceramic artists based out of Alfred, NY. Both collaborated on designing the works you can see inside. Detweiler created the plates and Allstadt created the bowls and mugs. The set melds function and clean design while bolstering a modern aesthetic to complement the interior design of the home.”
My artwork
All of my works in Alfred's Alf House were created by myself from start to finish. Most of the works were completed while at Alfred University, a few of them I started as a student and finished at a later date. All of the works is available for purchase, but nothing has sold yet. If you see something you enjoy, please contact me to see if it is still avalible for purchase!
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Day 6
Points, points and more points!
Days off from public tours allow Team Alfred to gradually move up in competition rankings.
Tuesday, Oct. 13th
A Day Filled with Points
By the end of this day, Alfred would stand in 7th place! This is where we stood on Day 2, but we soon fell to 11th place because of a few slip ups. Day 4 and Day 5 we gradually kept making sure all of our contests were performed precisely as to gain the maximum points available for each individual task.
Completing tasks well do pay off with some points, but half of the accumulative points available for the decathlon come from judged walkthroughs. For those of you who are interested, you can find all of the information on all contests by visiting this Solar Decathlon Link here.
Todays post I will elaborate on some more tasks (mainly ones that I have yet to focus on), as well as the start of the juried walkthroughs.
Communications Walkthrough
For the Communications competition, points are rewarded based on a few simple factors: you must have social media profiles that actively participate in reaching out to your audience; you must have a pamphlet and posters for physical visitors to the home. I was meant to be one of the three students who walk judges through the home, but I overslept so Avery Sandler took my place for me. We met all of the factors required, so we should score well. Click here for the official Communication rules.
Home Life Contest
Home life scores teams by simulating what the house would be like to live in. I already mentioned lighting, and the dinner parties and movie night are already over. What is also included in this category however is Hot Water Draws and Home Electronics.
The hot water is done three times a day, and requires 15 gallons of hot water (110°F) to be drawn to receive full points. This task takes a lot of energy. Normally we would have plenty of solar hot water that is heated for free by the California sun, but our solar hot water is not working. Upon installing it before competition week we discovered that the company that donated us the system neglected to include one essential fitting. They could not make one in time, and we scoured all of southern California for the part to no avail. Because of this we have to heat our own water.
Home electronics is really simple. All we have to do is have a computer plugged in, turned on and charging as well as our TV on while at 75% brightness. The tv continually loops all of the architectural narative video walkthroughs that all teams have created. You can watch ours on Team Alfred's Website here.
Architecture Walkthrough
The Architecture walk pairs with Engineering to be the two most important parts of the competition. It judges several layers of the house including concept and design approach, Architectural implementation and innovation as well as professional documentation. Things like natural lighting aesthetics, material selection and living comfort are only a few aspects of what teams are scored on. Believe it or not our selection of furniture, ceiling fans and kitchen cabinets are all part of this walkthrough.
The two lead architectural students from Alfred State College (now alumni) came to California exclusively for this walkthrough so that they could give the judges exclusive information on design choices and the whole nine yards. They had it all down pat. They of course have real world jobs, and in order to get back to them we had to switch walkthrough times with another team so that these two architects could be on this architectural walk. Originally we were allowed to do this from the start of the event, but for some reason the organizers last minute told us we no longer could switch, even though we already had another school that agreed to switch with us. Because of this we had to create a ten minute haphazard walkthrough video of the two architectural students so that we could let our judges watch it on our TV.
I was one of our team to fill in. I was basically was just a body. I only had a few words to describe some aspects to the house that stand out to me as an artist, but Avery Sandler (being the team lead) covered as much as he could for us in the absence of our architects.
Commuting (click here for more official rules)
More Electric Vehicle (EV) driving. Today Avery met up with the other teams for a photo shoot and filming before he set out to drive our daily mileage. Avery Sandler and myself are the only two registered to drive in this as we are both over 25. The rules are that you drive 25 miles under 2 hours. If you are over time or under miles you get docked points. You may drive anywhere you want and you can have as many or as little passengers as you'd like. The objective of course is to drive smoothly so you use less power as the car must be charged off of each teams own house.
Here is another Solar Decathlon Minute where today they highlight the Commuting contest. Here and there you can see Avery Sandler and Taylor Kelley riding around in our white BMW i3.
I have already talked about the laundry contest where teams are required to wash towels, but here are another few that are in the same category. These tasks, like many others, require teams to complete with an observer at least once per day.
- Maintaining refrigerator and freezer temperatures. This task is simple as we just need to have the fridge plugged in and refrain from opening the doors. There are sensors inside, but opening the doors to take pictures is counter productive.
- Dishwashing contest requires the washer to run a complete cycle. A sensor is placed inside as the washer must reach a temperature of 120°F to receive full points
- Simulating cooking requires us to vaporize 5 pounds of water.
At the end of the day, it is points that matter.
After several days of data we have begun to realize some faults and things that we should have changed to save power. Discovering our flaws is perhaps the most important aspect of this entire competition.
Out of all of the schools, we are consuming the most amount of power. This is not good. If our cumulative consumption by the end of the competition is over a certain number, we will loose ALL 50 points available. Up until now all of us have casually been using the homes power for listening to the stereo, using lights when we needed, putting our lunches in the fridge and charging our computers and cell phones. After looking at our high consumption, we decided to aggressively refrain from using any sort of power from the house. I even write my daily blog now at the Great Park's center gathering area where there is free wifi and power outlets. Every little bit counts!
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Days 4-5
Some new updates and insight on various decathlon competitions.
Day 4 — Sunday Oct. 11
The forth day I had off from the competition, but there was some interesting updates that I need to share- despite the lack of photos.
Today was the end of public tours, but not the last.
Tours will resume on Day 8, Thursday Oct. 15th, after the judging walkthroughs have been completed. However as tours were being delivered, competition points were still up for grabs.
This Solar Decathlon Minute describes a bit more in depth how teams earn points.
It's all about the Benjamins!
We did end up losing some points on things like the livability competition. Each night we leave the air conditioner on to cool the house and cut down on humidity. In the mornings at 11am we shut off the AC to open our doors for public tours. The house stays cool for most of the day, but then later after tours we need to turn it back on. Well on Day 1 we had to host our first dinner party and we forgot to turn the AC back on in the midst of things. Because of this the sensors picked up higher humidity and warmer temperatures than the other homes that had their AC on.
Hot Water Draw Competition
This task is another challenge to prepare for in which we used solar hot water connections on the roof paired with a hot water tank. Normally our solar hot water can heat up to 80 gallons of hot water during the day. Everything had been going well too, until we found out, for no reason in particular, that our hot water tank died.
Clothes Washer/ Clothes Dryer
All of our towels that we had to wash never completely dried, and our hot water test was extremely low as one would expect when equipment fails. This set us back 7 points. Even though most of the teams had marginal points separating one another, it translated to us being pushed down to 10th place out of 14 teams rather than 6th like we were. Because this was something out of our control, and it is a simple fix, we were able to just swap out the old heater with a new one of the same model.
Day 5
Monday, Oct. 12th 2015
Tours have officially been put on hold in order to start the judged walkthroughs; that of which is instrumental to the success or downfall of each teams home. These walkthroughs are heavily weighed in points as they define the house on a professional level on several categories.
This Solar Decathlon Minute gives an overview of all the teams homes.
Engineering walkthrough
This judged walk was delivered by Patrick Byrne, AU grad Saeed Azad and by our super senior & team captain Avery Sandler. I was told that the walk went very well and that we only have a few hiccups that should not matter much. Saeed told me that he was very excited and felt good after giving his speech to them on different systems because he explained it well and in such great detail that the judges had no questions for him.
Alfred University students and engineering judges.
Abnormally hot fall Temperatures!
Our garden, grass and flower boxes around the house need constant watering to keep them from dying. The weather we have been having here in Southern California since we have been here is extremely strange for this time of year- we have been told. Normally it has cooled down and 75-85°F each day. Instead we have has 95-105°F days!
Clothes Washing/Drying Competition
After each walkthrough, students leave while judges walk around amongst themselves for additional conversations and not taking. After they left we were able to begin the task of the day: solar dryer and hot water tests. We nailed it. Switching our hot water tank out the day before had allowed us to not only dry all of the towels up to the standards but I did hear a fail amount of cheering while they were drawing some hot water samples from the bathroom.
Team Alfred Social Media
The second and last jury walkthrough of the day was one called social media. This contest was one that had arisen out of nowhere just a short time ago. Basically you are scored based on the quality and quantity of social media posts across various networks. There is not much to say than the team does in fact have an Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and our own website. Despite having all of these things established however, we do not post as often as we should in this day in age. Especially from an artists standpoint, I can see the enthusiasm and interest in this event being much larger if the team would have taken the time investing in growing an audience before the competition.
Lighting Task
The last event of the night began at 7pm and required teams to turn every single light on in their home and leave it on for 4 hours. Most teams have automation working, but we have had issued with routers and connections in our home that drop at random so we need to be there. Someone else was to stay for this, but I picked up the slack and stayed by myself. It was not ideal, but I used to to get caught up on this for all of you! Most nights this task is required. All the houses have different styles of lighting, and the task required that ALL lights be on and at full brightness, the TV also being on but at 75% brightness.
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Day 3
Team Alfred catches up to speed!
Saturday Oct, 10th
Back in the Game
By day three we all caught up on sleep and started realizing that we needed to focus more on competition events to gain points. By this time there were enough events bearing points that we could start to see what place everyone was. Out of 14 teams, we were in 6th place. We could have gained more points but from lack of sleep we lost track of who was staying in charge of what. Over the course of these three days there was also a lot of public interest in how cool the house felt to others. This aspect was quite amusing, since our house was designed for western NY- the only house designed for extremely cold conditions (i.e. we have heated floors).
link to Team Alfred's competition scoring.
Art & Design!
We have been going through hundreds of handout pamphlets per day! Many people were interested enough in my artwork to take my business cards and take a look through the artist binder. All of the art in our home is by students, and for sale, however nothing has sold yet. There is still hope!
Visitors discussing their favorite highlights of the Alf House while exiting.
The Magic of Kindness
Being an active participant in welcoming people into the home while trying to take photos for documentation is quite the hard task to perform. Because of this, I leaned more toward delivering a fun user experience.Matter of fact, I am the only one who has thought to do so thus far. Later this week we will have more touring days so I will make it my prerogative to get more live action shots of the event.
Our House Sells!
Second and final Dinner Party
At the end of the night I attended the second and final dinner night at Cal Poly. Funny enough I had met the hostess, co-project manager of the Cal Poly house, on the first day during a food break. The house exceeded my expectations, but I guess I should have expected this much from a California school. They had custom dinnerware made by their institutions, as well as their schools own made ice cream and fruit topping. We had salmon; and yes, it was amazing!
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Days 1-2
The U.S. Department of Energy Solar Decathlon officially begins!
Day 1 — Thursday, Oct. 8th
Running on Fumes!
After a long trip and a crazy night of hectic work for the deadline, we were all able to get into our hotels for a whole four hours of sleep. All of us had to wake up early to make it to the house to finish cleaning and tweaking things; the construction students were finally able to get some sleep and then go to the beach for one day before going back to New York. After a couple hours of cleaning, store trips and setting up internal components we were able to all go to the opening reception with all of the other 14 teams. Originally there was around 20 teams, but several of them had to drop out due to factors such as funding; one such school being Yale University.
Upon entering the event, one thing stood out in my mind more than others: there was a massive camera crew in charge of documenting and broadcasting the event live (seen in the slideshow above). Even though I was sucking down my second large coffee to try and stay attentive, I realized that all of our hard work was going to pay off one way or another.
Even though I am not an engineer or architect, the event was more interesting than I could have hoped for. I began to realize that this competition is on the larger global scale in humanities fight for cleaner energy. This was greatly due to the wonderful speech by our Secretary of Energy (who is also a theoretical physicist).
After the opening reception we all had some photos taken and went back to our houses to prepare for the public opening at 11am for the hundreds of visitors.
Free food? Sign me up!
Later in the evening I was then scheduled to have dinner at WVU's house; this being the first of two dinners. The decathlon requires teams to both entertain guests with dinner as well as send out couples to other homes. This serves both as a means of meeting people and making connections, but also to test the usability of the home as well as using depleting some of the homes energy. The appetizers for this meal were amazing. All of the dinnerware was made my the ceramics department at WVU exclusively to be used for these dinner parties.
Day 2 — Friday, Oct. 9th
A Hot, Hot Day.
The following day we found out in the morning that it was to be a heat wave. We first went to the house and did our now normal daily ritual of cleaning our house so it looks amazing for our guests. My morning task was to drive our electric BMW for the commuting competition. This competition makes you drive 25 miles within 2 hours which makes for a fun event that also requires us to charge our car off of our homes solar power.
After a quick lunch I took a ride to Pier 1 Imports to buy a 9' wide umbrella and stand so that our visitors had a cool place to stand. From helping out the prior day I realized that visitors preferred to wait for a tour under our roof rather than in the direct sunlight where our posters were. Getting this and setting it up was instrumental to the flow of visitors to the home.
Because it was such a hot day (literally getting up to 104°F), we had time to go back and switch hotel rooms and finally go grocery shopping. Food in site and in the city is quite pricey, and because I am not working while I am here I made sure to keep requesting our team's professor to take us as he had funds from Alfred University to buy food for us all to have in our extended-stay hotel rooms.
At this point I was going to have the third day off (Friday Oct.9th) in which I was going to make plans on renting a car for a day trip to Los Angeles! However Avery, the team captain, called me and said that they are short on people for movie night and they are on their way back to pick me up. Per the rules of the competition, similar to cooking, all teams are required to play a movie in their home with guests as well as send out pairs to other homes. I pushed back my LA trip for this, but it was a fun classy time so no harm done.
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Arriving on Site
Team Alfred's Alfred University students arrive to their solar house site to assist Alfred State in completing assembly before the deadline.
Wednesday, Oct. 7th
West Coast Fever
Never having been to the west coast, a lot of us were extremely excited to have this opportunity to come here and participate. As a alumnus of Alfred University, I was eligible to officially compete in the competition as a Solar Decathlete. After landing in California the dramatic scene change sparked excitement!
By the time we landed in California this afternoon, I had not slept for an entire day. The original plan was to go unpack at the hotel and go grocery shopping, but we found out that the construction of the house was behind schedule so we needed to first go help them complete it if we could. The house was looking great but it had to be completed by 11pm, no excuses. Reality came crashing in after arriving at the house.
What Sets Us Apart
Alfred's Alf home was designed, constructed and assembled by students and faculty alone. There was only one other team that also did this project free from contractors. This is a great statement, but in reality it proved to be quite the challenge. Arriving with no safety gear we found out that we were not allowed to work around the house or in the house, so we would have to try and find things that we could do. We arrived, checked in, and gravitated toward our house site.
All of us had pre-registered, so we just had to present identification to receive our badges.
The Solar Decathlon Minute
It is official footage of the activities of the day. This video shows Alfred's House quite a lot, so I decided to embed it here. Note that their day numbering starts at the beginning of construction, whereas my blog merely follows the competition end of the event.
Arriving to Our House
Immediately when arriving I seen my best friend, Avery Sandler- captain of Team Alfred. Rather than a warm greeting, he quickly put things into perspective by telling me that I needed to work on the poster board assembly because he had no time and nobody else knows how to do it. They had no glue that was fast drying so I had to find someone to drive me to Home Depot. I returned to only find my fellow arriving students not knowing what to do, so I grabbed a few and had the come help me finalize my signage that I designed onto the board that we made prior to shipping.
Getting Energized
The dozen or so students that were there constructing the house for two weeks prior to our arrival had been working 18 hour work days to try to get completed on time- in the warmer than usual California fall weather. Because of this I was not able to stand their glances if I were to allow myself to stand around and do nothing. I tried to get the dozen students that arrived with me motivated by started to clean up the job site surrounding the house. After an hour or so I finally got everyone into it. At 7:30 all 20-30 of us finally sat down for pizza. Sitting there I realized that we only had a few hours remaining; after that the rules would not permit us to work on the house any more. Not only did this hurt me mentally in the aspect that I was part of the event for my alma matter, but also knowing that my artwork and designs were going to be represented in this house. (I had no time for taking photos.)
I quickly began to uncrate my eight pieces of artwork one at a time to start hanging them in the house. As I was doing this I delegated several students to start cleaning the rooms so that my work would be going into clean spaces. I really wish there were someone that was not busy to take documentation photos, but it was a nut house. Everyone was past being polite and taking their sweet old times. We all were dead tired, but we all were non-stop sweating while the race for completion.
I finally finished mounting all of my art around 10pm, only to realize that nobody had even attempted to mount the poster boards!
I jumped on a student and had them come assist me. We had to add a mount and cut part of the railing; changes to the original plans were made, therefore changes to my poster board design had to be made as well. We designed the board to be in two sections so that we would not block the handrail- a requirement of the contest. However because changes were made my final setup of this bottom section has a much larger gap than anticipated. Since the background of all of the posters contains the team logo, it ended up coming out a little sloppy. However I was able to get my art and designs completed for the team all right before 11pm, despite the unforeseen circumstances. All was good for the night. We were able to finally go to the hotel to check in and get some sleep!
Assembly of the Alf House before we Arrived!
Below is a slideshow of images and a video that show the assembly progress by team captain Avery Sandler and the Alfred State students.
Interview of Team Alfred in a video from the 5th day of assembly.
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Welcome to California!
This blog serves to cover Team Alfred during the U.S. Department of Energy's Solar Decathlon 2015, as well as my experiences as the teams sole artist and designer.
Here is a Great Introduction Video to the Solar Decathlon!
My contribution to This Competition:
I am the teams lead artist and sole designer who has the opportunity of attending the decathlon in California as a decathlete. During my last semester as a student at Alfred University I was commissioned to create the Team Alfred Logo. As an alumnus I designed the t-shirts, handouts and posters. After all of my hard work we discovered that I in fact could become a decathlete since I have graduated within 1 year of the competition. As a decathlete my efforts with this competition, besides the commissioned design work, was to decorate the home with my works of art. Both the art and design are implemented to support and compliment the engineers, architects and construction students of Alfred State College and Alfred University while they put their solar home to the test against the other competing institutions across the nation.
I have also taken it upon myself to compile my experiences into this blog as I follow the daily progress of the Solar Decathlon competition. I hope some of you will follow and share my experiences as they unfold.
Visit Team Alfred's website
Visit the Solar Decathlons website
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