VIDEO: UC Solar House Hits the Road During a Sunny Send-Off!

The University of Cincinnati pep band played light-hearted tunes and a large campus crowd clapped to send the UC solar house on its way to Washington. The innovative house, which has been under construction in front of Braunstein Hall for six months, will be reassembled on the National Mall where hundreds of thousands of visitors are expected to tour it.

UC President Nancy Zimpher spoke at the send off, providing the student builders the campus’ best wishes for a win in Washington.

While the house is on the National Mall in the nation’s capital from Oct. 12-19, it will be part of an international competition called the Solar Decathlon. In that competition, UC will be up against 19 other international rivals to see which school built the best solar house.

UC was selected to participate in the contest on the strength of its internationally recognized College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning and its nationally recognized College of Business and College of Engineering. Among other schools participating in the Solar Decathlon are Carnegie Mellon, Cornell, MIT and Penn State.

However, UC’s house is unique in some respects, designed as it was by students in the university's top-ranked architecture program. The students have developed roofing advances, unusual uses for evacuated tubes and a special thermo-electric heat pump along with a water-collection system and other environmentally friendly systems. The one common factor to all the house’s systems is that all ultimately derive their power from the sun.

One project construction leader, Eric Stear, 23, of Wichita, Kansas, admitted that the solar house has proved to be one “power-full” challenge for him. He stated, “This is the first time I got to build something I designed in school. It started out on paper and ended up as wood, nails and reality. It’s great to have something solid to show for all our design work. It’s taught me a lot. I’ve learned it’s very easy to design on the computer where you can be infinitely precise, but reality is much more of a patchwork process because, frankly, there’s no such thing as a straight piece of wood.”

When in Washington, the UC house will be toured by members of the public as well as builders, architects, environmentalists, educators, government officials and the news media. The house and its competitors will be tested on 10 criteria related to energy creation and conservation.

• Check out a slide show of the UC solar house under construction.
• Read more about the house and its technical innovations.
• Read more about UC’s programs in architecture, engineering and business.
• Apply to UC.