Solar house on view now at Loyola Campus

By Robert Carver

Concordia’s Solar Decathlon team passed a major landmark April 8 with the arrival of their modular energy-friendly house at the Loyola Campus.

The home, which was engineered by Concordia students, came in four parts by truck from Alouette Homes in Granby. It will remain in place at Loyola until late September.

Until then, engineering students like Master’s contender Mark Pasini and undergrad Robert Moussa will help fill the house with all sorts of energy-saving technology. When it’s ready, it will once more be disassembled and shipped to the national mall in Washington, D.C., to represent Canada at October’s solar decathlon competition.

They will get some much-needed publicity next Thursday, when Global Television is scheduled to send a crew to report on the house’s progress.

“We’re probably going to have the most advanced stuff in our house,” said Pasini, the project’s team leader. “We’re really going to try to push the envelope.”

The house, which is designed to be completely reliant on solar power, has been fitted with triple-glazed windows and will be insulated on the outside with rigid foam and on the inside with a spray-on insulation. Although the materials are not necessarily novel or cutting-edge, the team hopes to maximize their efficiency by using software controls to take full advantage of what they do have.

Using a test home that they’ve constructed on the roof of the BE building, the team has been trying out some of their ideas, experimenting with such things as innovative airflow and full-time computer monitoring of the house’s systems.

The major gains to be made are in developing the right software. To this end, students like Moussa are writing the algorithms that will tell the house’s systems how to function depending on conditions outside.

The house will be outfitted with a small weather station that can measure, among other things, temperature, wind, and light levels. This information will be processed by the software, which will make decisions on the smallest details, such as whether to increase airflow through the house or whether the blinds have been lowered to the optimal level.

One low-tech device they plan to use to moderate the temperature is what’s known as a Trombe wall, which is essentially a water-filled wall Pasini describes as “a bunch of fish tanks stacked together.” When the temperature in the building rises, the wall absorbs some of that energy, which is eventually released when the temperature drops again.

Climate control is vital. At the competition, which is hosted every three years by the U.S. Department of Energy, the house will be judged on 10 criteria designed to measure ease of use and comfort as well as energy consumption.

For this reason, the house will be completely outfitted with appliances that must be used regularly to simulate actual living conditions.

The team has been successful in attracting support and publicity, from the trucks and drivers supplied by Transforce to the house’s switching system supplied by Siemens. Pasini attributes the generous support partly to the fact that this house will be Canada’s only entry in the competition, and the only non-American entry besides a Spanish contingent.

There is an above-and-beyond element to this project. Not only will the house be energy-friendly, it will also incorporate construction materials that are easier on the environment.

Although final decisions have not been made yet, the team is investigating the use of materials made from wheat and straw for the walls, and maybe even a counter top made from broken glass. It’s all in the spirit of reducing our impact on the earth, Pasini says.

The Solar Decathlon is hosted every three years by the US Department of Energy. It takes place in the National Mall, the strip of land between the Capitol and the Washington Monument, creating a temporary “solar village.”

Each home will be required to function for a full 10 days, and will be judged in 10 categories designed to measure energy efficiency, liveability and the teams’ ability to communicate about their projects. This will be Concordia’s first entry in the competition.