*This informal award harkens back to the inaugural decathlon when Home Depot cited the Miners for the "Best Customer Service". HD lauded S&T for the enthusiastic and well-organized way they hosted public tours. Led by the indomitable Allison Arnn (now Allison Casem), the first solar house team fanned out along the line of visitors to describe the home's design philosophy, keep the guests entertained, and otherwise talk themselves hoarse while making the wait seem short.

Right at 5:00 p.m. the crowds melted away until Team Missouri set out all the landscaping plants, and then it was a feeding frenzy. We couldn't put them out fast enough to the grateful public, and some people even said "no, not that one, the red one next to it!" Anyway, it was better than hauling them back to a Missouri winter.
And then, as the night crew staggered back to the Mall, disassembly started in earnest.

First the shade louvers came off, and as night fell the deck did, too. By 3:00 a.m. the night crew had removed the huge deck, and by the dawn's early light the evacuated tube system was, well, evacuated. Surprisingly, few other teams worked through the first night.

Morning was mostly site clean up while we waited for the first trucks to arrive, then it was a case of "lift 'dat barge, tote 'dat bale" and get the deck sections loaded on the truck. The Miners couldn't do much to the house itself until our western
neighbor Rice University craned their house directly over Missouri airspace onto another trailer. That was a great time to evacuate the site and slip out front for a quick crew photo with team advisors Dr. Katie Grantham (S&T), six-week-old Logan G, and Mizzou's Barbara Buffalo.

The crane arrives tomorrow to lift the roof just enough to swing in the north window wall, and then they'll raise the house high enough to drive the second truck under it, set it down, secure it, and hit the road until 2011.

We keep referring this amazing group of undergrads (you listening, California?) as "the team", and that barely describes it. This group works so well together as to defy description. No drama, no tension, just go about the work as if it were no big deal. These Miners and Tigers (oh, my!) clearly enjoy each others' company and work as a unit. Everyone pulls their own weight and no one seems in charge because everyone simply takes care of business. Do they have fun? You bet, every chance they get!

California, which held first place until the last days, had a great house but maybe the Karma got 'em. They made multiple claims, all bogus, they were the only undergraduate team on the Mall. CNN bought that nonsense without checking, and to our knowledge Cali still makes that claim on their website. We'll quote a recent S&T grad who works in the Cali desert (and who just happens to be from Illinois) who wrote last week that:

"I now live and work with these Californians, and they just don't seem to grasp that they aren't the best at everything. It just takes being beaten by "those dumb old country folks" from the Midwest for them to learn who the real engineers are. Keep it up, Solar House. I'll make sure to clear up the confusion next time I run into a Santa Clara grad at the office ;)"

Show-Me Solar hung in there for a respectable 11th place, right behind Ohio State and two slots above powerful Virginia Tech. The team is understandably disappointed in their engineering and architecture scores, but as one participant asked rhetorically "those architecture comments were like reading ones from another house & we can't appeal a subjective contest. ugh!!!"

In the judges' defense you have to keep in mind that this biannual event comes together with hundreds of staffers in roles outside of their normal jobs. The judges are expected to have the wisdom of Solomon and the data retention of an Excel spreadsheet, but YOU try walking through twenty innovative homes and keeping straight which feature went with which house! Obviously errors are going to be made, especially in the subjective events. Rumors are even swirling that officials were debating changes in this year's contest as late as last night.

Here's a quick salute to Illinois, whose more traditional style home (below) is an indication of how much the 2009's Decathlon entries actually looked like homes compared to '07, when to this writer's eyes, there were an awful lot of "bank branch" buildings out there.

First of all, Monday was a federal holiday, and a Solar Decathlon visitor told us that the Decathlon site was so crowded you could barely get inside any of the houses.

Second, even today the lines to tour solar homes are long, despite cold, rainy and windy weather. Apparently busloads of local high school students descended on the site today.

Most important, Show-Me Solar is creeping up in the rankings with two contests yet to go. Luke Sudkamp reports that

"WIth the cloudy weather we've turned off all unnecessary systems so we can maintain our temperature"

"We got 8th in lighting, tied with 3 other teams, and the architecture jury comments got back to us yesterday too. The best comment was that the light fixture in the bedroom didn't match the ones in the rest of the house. In reality, they are exactly the same it just has reading lights built in that you can't see."

Luke goes on to say "there was a team-only open house program last night so it was really good to visit the other houses and all their ideas."

In the meantime pre-contest favorite Virginia Tech, which led S&T by just two points yesterday, has dropped to 16th place and Illinois has, for the moment, snatched the lead from Team California (see blog story from Oct 10th, below).

Back to local highlights, Congresswoman Emerson was by for a tour Wednesday, and we understand that Representative Carnahan took time out his busy schedule to see the house earlier in the contest.

Engineering scores will be released tomorrow morning at 8:00 a.m., and net metering will round on the scoring, and along with any possible penalty points, determine who will win the overall event.

Keep your fingers crossed!

It's not a perfect 50-50 split of subjective/objective points. There are 450 possible subjective and 550 objective points that can be earned, as outlined here:

Architecture -- 100 points (subjective)
Market Viability -- 100 points (subjective)
Engineering -- 100 points (subjective)
Lighting Design -- 75 points (subjective)
Communications -- 75 points (subjective)
Comfort Zone -- 100 points (objective)
Hot Water -- 100 points (objective)
Appliances -- 100 points (objective)
Home Entertainment -- 100 points (objective)
Net Metering -- 150 points (objective)

We still have net metering, engineering and lighting design to go, two measurement- and one opinion-based. Engineering shouldn't be affected by the weather, and while all homes should be equally affected by the threatening rain, those teams who managed their energy well during the sunny days may have an advantage when it comes to net metering.

Stay tuned, just a few more days to go.

What used to be called the energy balance portion of the contest is now listed as net metering. Whatever you call it, it is simply banking excess energy in batteries ('02, '05, and '07) or for the '09 homes, sending it back to the grid for others to use. Scoring for this event won't be known until the end of the event when the faux grid established on the National Mall spits out each house's production vs. usage figures over the 10-day event.

No report from the team last night, but we imagine they are banking their physical energy for the weekend's huge crowds, and the frenetic tear-down process that will start late Sunday afternoon.

There are still three contests that have not been judged: Net Metering, Lighting Design, and Engineering, so let's keep our fingers crossed for Missouri to jump in the rankings.

In the meantime here are more of Sara's updates:

Day 4

"Terry McCalister came and took a tour of the house. He is the CEO of Washington Gas and says the company is planning on donating a total sum of $30,000 to us."

Day 5

We started out at 9th place.
Announcement of 2 of the 5 jury tour competitions.

Architecture - 18th
Market Viability - 11th

The results for the first dinner party (where teams host neighbors from other teams) were - 4.611/5 we were voted 5th out of 20
The results for the home entertainment were - 3.9/5 we were voted 9th out of 20. But we think that is only because we have an awesome 55 inch LED screen and people were jealous and didn't want to lose.

The second dinner was also served today consisting of a Chicken Spanini, Caesar salad with a homemade Caesar dressing, roasted potatoes, and a pumpkin parfait.

Who says engineers can't cook?

We'll let Sara provide her own play-by-play:

"Day 3 was a very interesting day here in D.C. We started the day off as a normal day with a hot water draw and temperature and humidity testing at 7:30 in the morning. We then cleaned up from the dinner party we had the night before. One of the contests includes each house having 2 dinner parties and to entertain the three other houses in our 'neighborhood.' Bryan Glass, Ben Brannon, Anna Osbourne, and Andrew Adams prepared a phenomenal meal for the others. People raved about the Cobb burgers, roasted vegetables, a strawberry salad and most of all about the homemade vanilla ice cream we served. While they entertained at our house, six of us also went to the other houses. Amber Gomaz and I went to Louisiana's house to enjoy some authentic Cajun cuisine. After talking with six other decatheletes about their experiences so far, it made me feel like our student led team (consisting of only undergrads and no help from contractors) was doing VERY good. After going around the table, we by far had the less expensive house, got the most sleep during the construction week, and were far less worried about the jury tours that we gave earlier that day. All in all, I think we are doing pretty well after hearing all their stories.
Anyway back to day 3. The day went very smoothly and we gave a lot of tours. The best comment of the day for me was when a lady who said that she had toured the 2007 house walked in to the bedroom and just stopped dead in her tracks. The only thing out of her mouth was "This house must have been designed by girls..!." She went on to explain that when she walked through the 2009 house, she was very surprised by all the room and storage it had compared to the 2007 house. She was very impressed with the 2009 house, which seemed to be the consensus for the whole day.
When 5 o'clock rolled around we closed the doors to the public and opened them up to UMR/ Missouri S&T alum. Alumni from the D.C. area came to tour the house and take us to a very tasty reception. We entertained about twenty-five alum and their family; Chancellor Carney even came to visit. Some Solar House alum members even came to pester us for the weekend."

Some of the crew that slogged through the '05 and '07 houses include (left to right) Chris Wright, Nick Bristow, Chris Krueger (can't remember that one), and Joe Schaefer.

"Our team is the only undergraduate-led team in the entire competition."

We'd like to call out Mr. Anand and have him check his facts. S&T has had an undergraduate-led solar house team in 2002, 2005, 2007 AND 2009, and will probably do the same in 2011. California seems to be a little late to this party, don't you think?

AND, S&T is one of the few teams who have done almost all of the construction work themselves ('02 through '09) instead of contracting out all the work.

Major firms have told us they love to hire S&T design team grads because "they don't mind getting their hands dirty" (or is dirt a known carcinogen in California?), and "they think on their feet" (hopefully before shooting their mouths off).

The Miners have also had undergraduate-led design teams that have accomplished the following:

National Champions in international solar car racing in 1999 and 2003.
National Champions in Human Powered Vehicle Racing in 2007. No Ahnold-led team has ever done THAT!
Formula SAE racing team ranked as high as 6th in the world just this past summer.
Student-led teams that serve poverty-stricken communities in South and Central America (Engineers Without Borders), and with almost 100% undergrads.
Undergraduate-led Mine Rescue Teams that compete against and defeat professional industry rescue teams,

.........and the list goes on and on. No brag, just fact.

We'll sum up by using the Missouri team's slogan: Don't tell me, SHOW ME!!

End of rant, for now.

*What is Santa Clara known for? Well, there is a pretty good DCI Drum Corps based out there.

Now the (work) gloves are off and the competition is underway, and this room is the jewel of the design.

The landscaping is finished (native Missouri species all) and the Miners' display boards are mounted around the property, ready to host what are expected to be hundreds of thousands of Mall visitors over the next ten days.

This Saturday the Miner Alumni Association MD/DC/VA Section will get a special twilight house tour, and then return the hospitality by taking the entire student crew to a fancy DC dinner. Probably no golden arches in those plans.

And no house tour is complete without checking out the humongous bathroom, so check this out.

Sara reports that "today Wednesday we actually accomplished quite a bit. It was the first time since Day 1 that night and day crews worked together for the whole day. Here a couple of things that happened."

"About 98% of the deck was completed. Just a few more facia boards are needed to complete the whole thing. The railing was completely installed; unfortunately, we were not able to stain it because of the fear of rain during the night. Inside the house, the touchups, sanding, and painting were all worked on. The final coat of paint will be applied first thing in the morning."

Sara goes on to gush that "last night we found out that we were 4th out of 11 of the teams that have all of our electrical components installed and inspected. Because of this we were able to get grid-locked early and also received a bonus 28.9 kW hours. With those bonus hours we will be able to get some of the more vital operations complete without suffering the loss of the initial power. Good news though...today we generated 9 kW hours for our personal use...producing more than we actually used!"

"We also assembled the coffee tables, end tables and dining room table today.
The guttering was almost completed as well."

Meanwhile, there is a weather advisory in the District today. A cold front is blasting through the area that will have winds gusting to 40 mph. Should be interesting.

We've alluded to the house getting hit by a tree en route to DC. The roof damage was only cosmetic, but it happened to be on a prominent part of the home. The solution was to replace roof panels, try to bend the tangled mess back in place, or just live with it and explain it to the judges,

Well, the Show-Me Solars had originally planned to install guttering, and looking back at the plans they realized that a gutter would hide the damage nicely, so Corey Brennan and Amber Gomaz spent a good part part of last night bending coil stock into a custom-made, 52' long gutter.

With the help of Dr. Seth Orsborn, Corey, Amber, David George and Sara Shafer, the new gutter went up easily. As you can probably tell from the photo at left, if you absolutely have to bring a Ph.D. to this event, it's so much better if you bring a tall one.

Another sign that the competition is growing nearer is water delivery. There are no water supply lines on the National Mall, so each house has to provide its own water supply and water pressurization system. Organizers send around large water trucks to provide 300+ gallons of water to each house, so teams has to have their own tanks and pumps. Each house must provide a waste tank to recapture "grey water". All the systems remain clean, so in reality the "waste" water from showers is still pretty clean. We don't flush toilets for real on the Mall, and don't use detergents to reduce any risks of spills.

The trucks go house to house like milkmen of yore, and teams carry the hoses from the next door neighbor's to yours to avoid spills or damage.

*Back to the question that is on everybody's mind............how many engineers DOES it take to fill a water tank? We're not sure how many it really takes, but our federally-funded research proves without a doubt that filling a water tank will keep three engineers completely fascinated for hours.

Strolling up and down the Mall you might see someone walking unsteadily out of a house, shaking their hands and arms, saying............

"Oooooohhhhhh! That TINGLES!"

We now take you back to our regular programming.

It is an engineering puzzlement that deck sections that fit together beautifully in Rolla are now out-of-square and the bolt holes don't match up.

You pay $35K for professionals to move the house to DC and they find a way to hit a TREE with a corner of the house and shred the metal roofing on the front of the house.

The team next door goes to dinner and asks you to make sure no one steals their house.

You house-sit literally for that team and take the opportunity to see what kind of cool power tools they have.

Contest rules require nearly silent generators, yet some teams bring units that sound like Neanderthal Harleys (no redundancy jokes here, please).

Your teammate stumbles and falls, and you are so sleep-deprived that you can't stop laughing.

You sneak a DC-based architect in your home for an early tour and he REALLY likes it.
He's impressed that it seems bigger on the inside than the outside.

The wife of the guy who established the Solar Decathlon back in '02 walks through your house and raves about it, calling it "uplifting".

You persuade your team's only liberal arts grad to finish off your drywall repairs.

Your advisor steps on that one deck section that you don't quite have bolted together yet.

The new architectural chic for '09 is corrugated metal. One such house has a lovely patina the rest of us recognize as rust.

There isn't enough water in DC to keep the students hydrated.

No matter how many times you spec something out somebody will cut it wrong. At least once.

We'll post some more event photos later tonight..................