Today I headed down to the Solar Decathlon on the National Mall. While there I was able to tour 15 of the 20 homes. I was happy to see that the Mall was crowded with people braving the wet and cold to visit these houses, even if that meant that the lines for some of the more award winning homes (like Germany and California) were so long that I chose to see 8 other houses instead of trying to get into them.
These houses all had innovative design solutions to create energy efficient and responsible homes. Interestingly enough, most of the homes used off the rack products, but just assembled them in innovative ways. Where I found the homes to be lacking was that most of them did not fully address their sites. Many of the homes did not interact with the portions of their lots that faced away from the main walk-way (those on the North were predominantly South focused, and those on the south were mainly North focused). Now I know a lot of this had to do with strategic window placement, but for homes which were little more than 15’x50′ rectangles it felt like opportunities to fully engage the site were lost. The teams DID engage the sites, they created decks, plantings and water features, but the houses often did not interact with these features.
One of the things that I found the most informative about the whole competition was not something anyone did, but rather what they were prohibited form doing. Most of the teams had integrated some form of waste water reduction technology through the filtration and re-use of gray and rain water systems. Unfortunately, they were not allowed to use these systems, because in DC it is a violation of plumbing code to use rain or gray water from anything domestic; it can only be used for landscaping needs. Apparently this is standard in many jurisdictions throughout the country. For a city that is trying to be more LEED friendly and at the same time develop its urban neighborhoods, this is a travesty. The student representatives at many of the buildings made it a point to highlight the water savings features and their inability to use them and encouraged visitors to contact their representatives to change this piece of legislation.
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