assembly & disassembly
If building a solar powered house were easy, there wouldn’t be a competition about it. Imagine how hard it is, therefore, to build one, pack it up, transport it to Washington, DC, and assemble it on site in just over a week. You have two years: go! In such a short design/build project executed by students, ease of construction, transportation and assembly is of supreme importance. A cutting-edge house built by amateurs that needs to move 400 miles over land is certainly a central design requirement that dictates the basic shape, size, and construction methodology we employed.
A critical decision the team made in its first semester was that it is far better to avoid shipping separate sections of the house. Thus, the shape of the main structure was determined by highway requirements of a maximum 16’ wide, besides the competition cap of 800 square feet. This severely limits the interior space and configuration, necessitating multiple programmatic uses for rooms and the creative integration of exterior spaces. The only module of the house shipped separately is a 3-foot section of the sunroom, which serves to break the plane of the south side of the house.
Building with structural integrated panels allowed students with little experience to assemble the floor, walls and roof of the house in mere days. Combined with their excellent insulating properties, these SIPs were an obvious choice for our team. Furthermore, the entire structure was built atop a steel substructure to prevent it from flexing or breaking during shipping. The substructure is used to jack the house up and down easily- instead of hiring professional riggers, eight students are positioned with jacks around the house and turn cranks to the sound of a drum. Once the competition is over, we can remove the steel and recycle it for the next house.
