The ZEROW HOUSE and a lot of its accessories were already in route to D.C., so the student-driven truck followed suit.  This truck, already packed with solar panels, furniture, interior decorations, tools, and much more, needed one more addition before it could be on its way: the green wall.  The green wall was the last to be loaded onto the truck in order to minimize the amount of time it will need to spend in complete darkness.  This beautiful feature of the ZEROW HOUSE was designed to be disassembled, packed into a truck, and driven to D.C. 

Ryan, one of the designers of the green wall, smiles for the camera as he sees his baby paked away for a long trip!

 More photos at

9/27/2009 Loading up the Green Wall

The ZEROW HOUSE is in the air!

 Today proved to be another day of hard work!  Although the crane crew did the actual move of the ZEROW HOUSE, students stood near for the successful practice of placing the ZEROW HOUSE on its foundations.  After the first lift onto the flatbed, we cleaned up the site and moved the shade structure, the decking, and other large pieces onto the truck the moving company drove to D.C.  Then we waited.  We waited for the crane to be disassembled and reassembled for the second lift.  We waited for the truck driver, who was stuck in traffic; then we waited for truck problems to be resolved.  Finally, a little after 5:00pm, with all the holdups and problems resolved, we watched the second lift, and the truck that would take our beloved ZEROW HOUSE to D.C. drove off into the distance.  Our eleven-hour day was long, but it was a great experience!

Team members, a little damp from morning showers, celebrate a successful first lift!

For more Crane Day photos:

9/24/2009 Crane Day

One day left to go before the big day!  After stripping the interior and exterior of the ZEROW HOUSE and packing some of these contents into a truck and setting aside the larger items the moving company would be taking (i.e. the shade structure, the decking pieces, etc.), other on site jobs still needed to be done.  The crane company came out to prepare the site for the next morning, and team members got ready for a “setting-down” practice run.  To ensure that our team could successfully sit the ZEROW HOUSE on its foundations when we were on the Mall, we decided to do a practice run on crane day, so the foundations were placed next to the ZEROW HOUSE in preparation for the lift.

Danny, a great lover of cranes and other large equipment, works tirelessly to set foundations for tomorrow!

With the send-off party over, the team had plenty of work to do.  The ZEROW HOUSE, approximately 14×50 ft, is about as large as it can be to travel down the highway as an oversized load.  The interior was stripped of its decorations, appliances, and furniture, and all of the “extras” had to be removed from the exterior to get the ZEROW HOUSE in shape for a truck ride to D.C.  For days, the interiors team had fun packing boxes, wrapping furniture, and repackaging appliances.  Outside, the disassembly crew spent numerous afternoons practicing for disassembly on the National Mall.  The shade structure came down, the porch and ramps were unattached, the green wall was disassembled, solar panels were removed from the roof, and our openings were covered up.  All of this had to be done in preparation for the big move!   

The hard part came after taking everything out of the ZEROW HOUSE and removing pieces from the exterior.  All these items either had to be carefully loaded into the U-Haul we rented or prepared for the moving company that was coming on Thursday.  Great preparation went into this weeks before any physical labor was done, as team members inventoried everything that would need to go into or onto trucks, made careful measurements, and ascertained how large of a truck would be needed to safely and efficiently accommodate all of the materials and tools needed for construction on the Mall. 

Sunset at the Solar House was a huge success!  People from Rice, Houston supporters, and sponsors came out to celebrate the culmination of our project as we prepared to send the ZEROW HOUSE to D.C.  The team was happy to be showing off the work that students have been doing for the past two and a half years!  Student tour guides were stationed in and around the house to provide information about the ZEROW HOUSE and to answer any questions our guests had.  To spice up the evening we served light refreshments and listened to sun-themed songs. Overall, it was a social event not to be missed. 

Guests enjoy the cool evening as they partake in the celebrations.

9/11/2009 Sunset at the Solar House

[Rebecca on Roque's account, writing retroactively...great alliteration, right?]

Diana and Monica Pope at T'afia

Ashley, Diana, and Rachal checking out at IKEA

Naoki and Will work on wiring in the Living Room.

And the construction team worked on completing their punch list:

Working on the Kitchen

Also, Jinge took some pretty sweet video of working on-site:

More photos of this busy workday at

9/5/2009 Monica Pope, IKEA, and Construction

[Rebecca on Roque's account, writing retroactively...great alliteration, right?]

So because our team accomplished so much on the construction of the ZEROW HOUSE by the time June rolled around, we gave ourselves a nice, and well deserved, summer vacation.  Although we were able to take the house to near completion in June, we still had plenty to do when the semester began again.  Our first official Solar D class (Tuesday, 8/25) was held in the architecture school, where we discussed what was left to do, from completing our punch list, to planning our send off party, to dinner parties, media tours, furnishing the house, installing our solar hot water tubes, and talk about DC…the list goes on and on.  We were also able to welcome our new and returning team members.  It was great to have such new enthusiasm join the team!

Our second class meeting, the following Thursday, was held on site, where we became reaquainted with the ZEROW HOUSE after a long hiatus.  We walked through the house, and everyone was able to see the great work that was done at the beginning of the summer, from installing the shade structure to working on interior finishes.  Also, we were able to split up into groups (ie construction crew, communications, interiors, engineering) and discuss how each of our teams were going to approach getting to Washington.  I’m pretty sure we were all motivated leaving this meeting!

1st Fall On Site Meeting, 8/27/09

8/27/2009 Site Tour and Group Meetings

[Rebecca on Roque's account, writing retroactively...great alliteration, right?]

The Department of Energy has three very large submittal deadlines for every team to meet, where teams have to submit “deliverables” in order to officially continue work on the Solar Decathlon.  Our last deliverables (before DC) were due on June 2, where we submitted final construction documents, our project manual (includes write ups on architecture, engineering, market value, and lighting), specs, health and safety manual, final communications plan, photographs, graphics, and our dinner party menu.  It was quite hectic leading up to the 5:00 mountain time due date, but we were able to turn in around 500 pages of documentation to the DOE with two hours to spare (-:

MAD props to our deliverables team, which included Jessica, Charles, Roque, Rebecca, Seth, and our last minute recruite, Seanna, who came to help us in a Dire Time of Need.  I wish we had taken photographs of our time holed up in RAVL, but alas, images of our deliverable-days will remain only in memories and written about in the blog post…

[Rebecca on Roque's account, writing retroactively...great alliteration, right?]

Following the Commencement Weekend Open House, we continued to work on the ZEROW HOUSE through the beginning of June, completing what construction we could.  We were able to use construction fellowships to pay undergrad and grad students, who had worked construction in the Spring, to work full and part time on the house, which worked out well in terms of having as little transition as possible with our work crew.

We continued our streak of awesomeness by installing our shade structure, the rest of the green wall, and the pv’s on the roof in mid-May.

Check out our pretty neat video of the shade structure installation, made with images taken by Eric Hester (www.darnart.com)

To see some of Eric’s stills, check out our Picasa album:

5/12/2009 Shade Structure Installation

[Rebecca on Roque's account, writing retroactively...great alliteration, right?]

After our dedicated student crew pulled a few all nighters to meet our construction goal, our team was super proud to show off the ZEROW HOUSE during Rice’s Commencement Weekend for friends, family, sponsors, and the Houston community.  We had quite an event scheduled, with a sponsor recognition cermony complete with a tasty brunch and private tours, and then we opened up the ZEROW to the public, and had a blast!  We had a great time discussing the design and engineering behind the ZEROW, and look forward to sharing our house with over 100,000 people in D.C!

Commencement Weekend Tour:

Check out all of our Commencement Open House fun on Picasa!

5/8/2009 Commencement Open House