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David George of Team Missouri tells us that Solar Decathlon officials have released the visitor head count of all twenty solar houses, and Show-Me Solar came out #1. All told MissourI hosted 21,402 guests!*

Maybe we were wrong about excruciating waiting lines at many of the homes. Usually the longest lines snake out of the winning houses in what we always figured was a popularity contest, but now we realize that our home was so open and spacious that we were able to "process" many more visitors than any of the other structures. The Miners and Tigers (Migers? Tiners?) posted students at several points throughout the home to answer questions about the energy systems, "green" materials, design philosophy, and interior decor.

You can call this a housing contest, but the hidden agenda really is public education, getting people to understand that we can support our (sometimes) ostentatious lifestyles in an energy-efficient way. In that category Missouri was the clear winner, edging Team Spain by about 80 pair of feet. There were something like 305,000 overall house visits, which works out to an average of 15,250 per house. Missouri beat the median by better than a third!

*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.

Hundreds of people have sent in cards and letters asking "what happens when the Solar Decathlon is over?" The answer is simple..........open up the event to the teeming masses, er, public, we mean.

Thousands of people patiently braved Saturday's rain and Sunday's chilling north winds to tour all twenty homes, kinda like a real estate agent's worst open-house nightmare. It was so crowded organizers kept a big display board that gave times estimates for waiting in line at each site. The bone-weary Show-Me crew played perfect hosts to a steady stream of wide-eyed strangers, all of whom asked the same questions over, and over, and over and...................so by 5:00 p.m. all you can repeat is, "yes, our beautiful cabinet doors are made of sorghum straw waste products." The upside of all the company is that so many folks commented on how open and spacious the Missouri house was compared to some of the other structures, and one perfectly charming little Italian woman said "oh, this is the house for me! The kitchen is just perfect, with lots of light. I just love it!"

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!

The Illini were the sleeper team this year, bringing an unassuming barn-like structure that would make expat Champaign/Urbanna grads feel right at home. Recycled barn siding formed a simple exterior that hid a well-designed home that took 1st place in Appliances, Hot Water and Home Entertainment, and narrowly lost to Germany in the all-important Net Metering contest. Germany (pictured at right) slipped by Illinois by winning the Net Metering contest by 12 points, just enough to move into the winner's circle by 11 points. How did our Hessian friends do so well in power production? Simple. They covered the entire skin of their building in solar panels, a slightly understated techno look that would be very popular in Europe, and a hugely powerful source of electricity.

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.

Here are some updates, both from team members and the public.

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!

During the 2005 Solar Decathlon it seemed that as soon as the event started, so did the rains. Frequent wet weather had a big impact on both the visitor tally and each homes' power generation, and this year may produce more of the same challenges. Predictions for D.C. are partly cloudy today, and clouds and rain for the home stretch of the contest; the same temps and precip that has plagued Missouri for much of the past week.

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.

Four-time veterans of the solar decathlon will tell you that you can't handicap this race.
In '02 a copper box that as we recall, didn't work all that well, took 2nd place based largely on its architecture points, and Auburn's spectacular home was only middle-of-the-pack. Maryland's brilliant seashore home looked to be the team to beat in 2005 but was easily bested by S&T's craftsman-style gem. In 2007 there were several early contenders, over which Darmstadt's hi-tech home took top honors.
During construction week '09" a lot of people figured that Virginia Tech's sparkling, modernistic one-piece home was the team to beat, but now VT is just 2 points ahead of team Missouri and sleeper Illinois, whom we kidded about last week, is holding strong in 3rd place. Who'd a thunk?

Team Missouri has been hanging in there strong in the middle of the pack, despite a mediocre score in architecture, the achilles heel of all four Missouri solar homes. The Show-Me Solar partnership did pay the hoped-for dividend, a 10th-place finish in the communication category, an area that the Miners also struggled with in past Decathlons. Who knew that when Solar Decathlon founder Richard King walked through the S&T home last week and wished us luck, commenting something like we 'hadn't gotten a fair shake in previous architecture contests', that the trend wouldn't let up?

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?

PR Chief Sara Schafer tells us that the Solar Decathlon is more than just 20 houses, it is a community complete with neighbors that come to visit and even score a free dinner. Your team's guests get to rate your hospitality, assign scores to your team's cooking skills, and even covet your big-screen TV.

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.

We were excited to see a Solar Decathlon story today on CNN.Com here until some character from Team California (Preet Anand, a senior at Santa Clara University*) told CNN about the build-up to the event and said:

"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.

Sara Schafer, erstwhile PR maven and exterior siding specialist par excellence, called in late last night to tell us how things are going.

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.

Obviously these homes get their electrical and heat power from the sun, which on a cloudless day that can be quite a bit of current. All of that has to be hooked up at some point.

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.