Students from Tufts and the Boston Architectural College (BAC) have joined forces to construct a fully functional solar house in preparation for a competition in Washington, D.C., this fall.
The "Curio house" will contend with 19 other solar-powered homes in the U.S. Department of Energy's Solar Decathlon in mid-October. The design for the structure was unveiled on April 22, which is Earth Day.
This is the first time Tufts students will compete in the Decathlon, which consists of 10 separate contests that judge the houses on various factors including design, marketing viability and the amount of physical energy output from the houses' solar panels.
Participants are striving to design the most attractive and energy-efficient solar-powered house. The house must also meet certain standards, such as an 800-square-foot space limit.
The houses will be judged on how well the teams meet the goals they set out for themselves, according to Fletcher School Professor of International Environmental Policy William Moomaw, the principal investigator for the project. Ben Steinberg, an urban and environmental policy and planning graduate student at Tufts, serves as the project's policy director.
The Curio house is currently under construction on the knoll between Pearson Hall and Latin Way. It will eventually be disassembled and moved to the National Mall for the competition.
The house will prove unique among its competitors not because of its complex designs or sophisticated features, but because of a larger emphasis team members put toward feasible marketing and outreach efforts, according to junior Matthew Thoms, the engineering director for the project.
Around 100 Tufts and BAC students have been involved with the project in some capacity, Thoms said.
This group, named Team Boston, is designing the Curio house to cater to homeowners in the low- to mid-level income markets.
"Everything pretty much that we're using is available on the market right now," Thoms said, adding that the blueprints for the houses will go online after the competition so that an average citizen could theoretically build his own Curio house.
The house gets its name from the curiosity that team members hope it will spark in the minds of those who are interested in sustainable living, according to Team Boston Project Manager Colin Booth, a student at the BAC.
Team Boston has also distinguished its approach from others by considering environmental policy in its design, Thoms said. Students from The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy have focused on this aspect.
"I think it's really exciting for Tufts," Thoms said. "It's a little tricky because it's such a long process, so you lose sight of the fact that it's actually going to be a physical house that's getting built."
Students at the BAC first teamed up with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 2007 to compete in the decathlon, but since then, the MIT team has fallen apart, Booth said. Project coordinators from BAC reached out to Moomaw following the 2007 competition.
"It just so happened that one of us had met Bill Moomaw at [a] presentation," Booth told the Daily. "We basically just cold-called him, and he was very excited to get involved."
Moomaw was immediately receptive to the idea and hopes it will create a widespread interest in energy efficiency.
"I've been interested in this a long time, and this opportunity came along and somebody from Tufts needed to be involved in putting it together, so I volunteered," he said. "This is what we need to do to get a lot of people engaged. In doing so, a lot of people know how to do it, and more of these homes will be built."
From there, Moomaw led the effort to submit a proposal to the Department of Energy, which ultimately selected 20 proposals out of a pool of 65, Moomaw said.
The Department of Energy gives each team a $100,000 grant, but Moomaw said this is a mere fraction of the necessary costs of properly planning and constructing the solar houses. Costs can range from $500,000 to $1 million, he said. Team fundraising will provide the rest of the money needed.
Team Boston kicked off the actual construction of the house on April 22 as part of an Earth Day celebration attended by members of the local community, including Medford Mayor Michael McGlynn.
"It was a very celebratory event," Moomaw said. "[McGlynn] actually put the shovel in the ground and did the groundbreaking, and he gave a wonderfully upbeat speech."
McGlynn has plans to provide land in Medford for the house after the competition, according to Moomaw.
The house would fit in well in the city, as Medford is one of the 10 "greenest" places in Massachusetts, Moomaw said.
A team from Germany, Technische Universität Darmstadt, won last year's decathlon.
The German team catered to the high end of the market, Thoms said. While the house was luxurious and energy-efficient, he explained, it was not affordable for everyday people.
According to Associate Provost Vincent Manno, who is involved with the project, the sustainability of the German team's victory was questionable.
"When you looked under the hood of the German project [which] cost $1.2 million, it had [all] sorts of terrific gadgets and bells in it," said Manno, who is also a professor of mechanical engineering. "You could design even greater complexity and technology. Is that really sustainable, though?"
Manno has high hopes for Curio house and was pleased at how Tufts students took to the project.
"I think it is an iconic activity as far as Tufts is concerned," Manno said. "The Tufts students, [Thoms and Steinberg], are really the heroes and … they're really putting their hearts and souls into it."
