Twenty solar homes from all over the world continue to rise on the National Mall. Wisconsin and Rice are Show-Me Solar's next-door neighbors, and Germany, Spain and Canada are here along with teams from California, Louisiana, Kentucky, New York and many other locales. To get more specific details about the Solar Decathlon and the teams go here.
One characteristic of several houses is a tremendous amount of glass surrounding the living space. Long-term use of S&T's 2007 solar house has shown that lots of glass means lots of solar gain in the summer and heavy A/C demand. We'll see how it works for those teams when they have to keep the houses comfortable during judging.
Yesterday afternoon Team Missouri finished most of the deck and now they are looking forward to installing the railing and landscaping that has just been delivered. Dr. Seth Orsborn, team advisor extraordinaire says they'll soon crack open a few (root) beers to celebrate being the first house working with, uh, a full deck. 
A crew of Sara Shafer, Matt Rankins, and Amber Gomaz (left to right) is working on installing the horizontal louvres which will allow light in but shield the south side of the house from the high-angle sun and reduce solar gain. In the meantime Decathlon officials have installed the electrical meters and are hooking the house up to the village power system that will be used to evaluate each home's electrical needs on the ersatz grid.
Look for more reports tonight and perhaps a few photos and quotes from Missouri's overnight construction crew. We understand they like to be called the "night crawlers".
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