Team ZEROW welcomed ladies to the site today: Diana and Ashely from the interiors team, Becca from engineering, and Antonia, who graduated this past year.  Becca was quickly whisked away to the engineering side of things, working with Roque and Brent, while the the interiors girls were faced with the task of cleaning this up:

The interior of the ZEROW was used as storage for the first two days...

 

After a few hours of hard work, the Living Room is livable!

The team repainted the walls (we had some serious paint problems, as we were given eggshell instead of flat paint in Houston, and scrambled to find a Benjamin Moore vendor that wasn’t already closed for the day), scrubbed bathroom tile, installed bathroom fixtures (ie the toilet paper roll), leveled the handrails, installed appliances that did not travel in the house (clothes washer and dryer, and the refridgerator), and scrubbed the front deck. 

In other exciting news, we put our exterior boards up!  North and Kathryn designed some awesome boards for the house, which are printed on aluminum and look stunning.  They also designed and fabricated the rack to display them, out of leftover plywood from the site.  They allow the boards to be clipped on to the green wall without having to puncture anything! 

Looking out from the roof of the ZEROW HOUSE onto the construction on the Solar Village.

Team ZEROW arrived on site at about 10am, and started working on getting the solar panels raised, the solar water heater pipes installed, and the front & back decking attached to the house.  The decking certainly took the longest time and effort because they are difficult to position and level.  The front stairs also gave us trouble because it doesn’t quiet touch the ground.  We also installed the solar clothes dryer (clothesline). 

Raising the solar panels takes strength! Even though we set up a special racking system just for raising the panels up on the roof, it still takes six guys to lift them into place.

Tomorrow, we will be going through and doing finer work, like the handrails, interior installation work, stringing up the handrail posts, installing solar deck lights, possibly painting the walls on the water tank.  All in all, the house is almost done.  The electrician will be working on connecting and starting the solar panels, as well as the AC and the water connections.

For more on Day 2 (and a recap of Day 1 from Roque’s perspective), check out:

First Days on the Mall - 11 pm Sept 30 thru Oct 2

The largest construction site in DC: the Solar Village

Team ZEROW has accomplished an incredible amount of work since our last update from the Mall!  After a long wait in the line to get onto the mall, with fifteen other decathlon 18-wheelers, and some forgotten cross beams (they accidentally stayed behind with the other cranes in Baltimore), the ZEROW HOUSE was successfully lowered its foundations on the National Mall at around 5:00 ET. 

The ZEROW as it finally gets "dropped" on the Mall!

As of sunset, the ZEROW HOUSE is on it’s foundations and has the Light Core front porch.

For more photos of Team ZEROW in action, check out

10/01/2009 Solar D: Day 1 on the Mall

Here’s a link to some sweet time-lapse images of real-time action on the Mall from OxBlue. Their three webcams will be taking hi-res photos of everything going on at the Mall from construction to tours to disassembly. Can you find the ZEROW HOUSE?

Here is the link to all three webcams.

Team ZEROW has made it safely to the National Mall from Houston!  I’ve heard from Jessy about our Midnight Date with Construction a few hours ago, and will be writing a post on that soon, but it’s time for a quick, real-time update on our activities on the Mall. 

Last night, the team unpacked the entire flatbed, and about half of the U-Haul (we left things like the pvs in side to keep them out of any potential construction-related danger), and set up the foundations and jig in preparation for dropping the ZEROW onsite the following morning.  Team members were out on the Mall until 5 in the morning, walked back to our hotel for a few hours of sleep, and were all back at the site by 9 am.  SUCH intensity! 

This morning, we’re ready for the house to be lifted onto it’s foundation points.  We are currently waiting in line with other houses to be put onto the Mall.

The ZEROW HOUSE on our 18 wheeler is currently waiting in line to be placed on the Mall via crane.

Even though we’re waiting, our team is still working!

Team members working on the ZEROW despite the wait!

All of the various teams' cranes seem to rival the scale of the Washington Monument when you look at them from the Solar Village. HOW EXCITING!

We are so excited to be here, and will keep updating as much as possible!

Did I mention that our team goal is to have the house up by midnight? (-:

While our team gets ready for construction and the whirlwind of the next few weeks that is the Solar Decathlon, you can check out our two-part, student-produced documentary on the ZEROW HOUSE, which provides an indepth look at the design, construction, and team behind our zero energy row house.

Don’t forget to check out the rest of our videos on our YouTube channel!  New videos are sure to be uploaded from the National Mall, so check back often.

 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.