Day 9 on the Mall
Travis is pretty happy about cleaning those solar panels.
It was a beautiful morning to be out and about. Tours began at 10, and as it was a Friday, they started off kind of slow, but steadily picked up pace as the day went on. We welcomed some of our awesome sponsors, school kids, Rice alum, news crews, and people from all over the country into the house, and explained to them our ideas on an affordable solar home.
David tells middle schoolers about the living room and our Light Core.
Everyone LOVED our solar powered dryer, aka our clothesline.
Today, we also had our first three subjective Jury Tours: Market Viability, Architecture, and Communications. Our jury teams had spent the previous night working for hours on how to best present the ZEROW HOUSE to the jury. One of the biggest parts of this was time, as we only had 20 minutes to present to the jurors, so we had to really focus on making our tours succinct and very clear. I think we rocked all three of the tours, and all of the jurors seemed to like our affordable solar home. Results for Market Viability and Architecture are announced Monday, and Communications is announced Tuesday. Keep your fingers crossed!
As tours wound down, things were just starting to being for the team! We hosted our first of two dinner parties on Friday night, and Megan had been cooking all day long in preparation for our 6 guests from Team Iowa, Team Alberta, and Team BC/Ontario. She did SUCH a great job of preparing our amazing dinner, which included local Houston and DC foods! Thanks to Monica Pope, who developed our menu and also provided our team with all of the local foods from around Houston and Texas (we packed up two ice chests full of food, and checked them on the plane with us to DC).
Megan preparing our spicy squash and curry soup before our guests arrive.
Dinner was really wonderful, and I think our menu was a complete success! We had Pure Luck feta, summer pickles, and sage crackers, endive and cremini mushroom salad (with Texas pecans and a truffle basalmic vinegrette), spicy squash and curry soup, a delicious Texas bison bolognese (a favorite of all), and panna cotta with Texas blueberry compote.
We loved having Team Iowa, Alberta, and Team North over!
What was really great (other than feeling kind of normal for a little bit, talking, chatting, and gossiping with new friends, and not having to worry about competitions or contests or tours), was that all of our guests really understood and loved what we were doing with the ZEROW HOUSE, in terms of how we were working with Project Row Houses, but also how we were able to show that solar can be affordable and accessible to people of all incomes. Our team is eager to see their beautiful homes! We had such a great time and good conversation with our new friends, and we can’t wait to hang out with them and play cornhole together in our “front yards.”
To see more of a very long, and very exciting Day 9, check out
