Eco at the A & P Show

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If your in Christchuch this week come down and see us November 9th to 11th at the A & P show.

We will be on Stand W16 & 17 opposite the Fleece display – Joined by our friends at Temperzone

Listen out too More FM as well for your opportunity to win a house lot of insulation for FREE (Up to the value of $5000)

1st Light Solar decathlon – 3rd place overall !!

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3rd place overall!!!

Before the final results of Market Appeal yesterday we were sitting in 4th place after climbing the ranks from our original ranking of 9th we made it to 3rd!

The award ceremony took place yesterday afternoon in the main tent on West Potomac Park. The teams, public and media all piled in to fill the tent and here the winners announced.

Market appeal was announced first and to our joy we placed third. Market Appeal is one of the more subjective contests so we really had no idea how it would pan out. Maryland came in second for the contest and Middlebury first.

Before the market appeal contest the rankings sat with Maryland first, Purdue second and SCI-Arc/CalTech in third, we sat just a few points behind the leaders in 4th place. Our high score for Market Appeal turned out to be enough to get us over the line and on the podium, with Purdue and Maryland keeping their spots at the top.

When third place overall was announced the team was ecstatic, it may not have been first place but it felt that way to us. Placing third out of 19 teams felt pretty darn good! People keep saying that this years houses are a step above the previous years. While we may not have been involved with previous Solar Decathlons we would have to agree about the high standard of houses in this competition.

Getting to know the teams and see inside their inventive and inviting houses has been incredible. Our team has had a fantastic time representing Victoria University and New Zealand in the competition and we’ve really enjoyed bringing a little bit of our Kiwi lifestyle to the competition.

With the competition over there is one more day for the public to come through and then straight afterward we are into deconstruction. While we had almost seven days to put the house up we have just four to take it down and get it off West Potomac Park. It’ll then be back to the crane yard to package up the house and send it back to New Zealand and to its new owner.

Thank you to everyone who has had a part in this along the way. We have been overwhelmed by the support of people here in the US and tremendous support from back home.

Solar Decalthlon Update

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Exciting news! Today the architecture contest results were announced and we got second place behind Maryland’s Watershed house! While of course we were hoping for number one we are pretty excited to have the First Light house rated so well. Second out of 19 teams isn’t bad at all!

The architecture contest is one of the juried contests which means they results judged by a jury who went around all of the houses talking with the students who designed them. Others are measured contests such as the Hot water contest which tests the houses ability to produce enough hot water and the energy balance which measures how much energy is used against how much the house produces.

One of the contests that allow the team to have a little fun (not that watching hot water run for 6 minutes at a time isn’t fun) is the home entertainment contest, which so far we are doing very well in. The home entertainment contest challenges teams to host two dinner parties and a movie night in their houses where they host the neighbouring teams.

On Monday night team members from Team Florida, New Jersey and Tidewater Virginia came over to the First Light house to be treated to a Kiwi meal. We served up NZ lamb (of course) on cous cous with a delicious summer salad, along with corn and courgette fritters to start and we finished up with a mix up of meringue, cream, passion fruit and crunchy bar.

We finished up by giving out a few Whitakers chocolates and Minties and one of the Florida team even had a try of some Marmite – which he insisted he quite liked. Last night teams moved around the houses checking out what it would be like to watch a movie in the house. For home entertainment your fellow competing teams give you a score which is then averaged out and added to your total. We are currently sitting at the top of the table for home entertainment and have another dinner party tonight, if it goes well tonight then Kiwi hospitality will win out!

Check out photos from the evening on our flickr page: http://www.flickr.com/photos/51786333@N03/page3/

Things are getting pretty exciting with award ceremonies announced each day. Yesterday the affordability contest was announced and we are pleased to say that the First Light house was estimated at $303,000 USD. This put us in 6th place for the affordability contest.

Tomorrow we hear about the Engineering results, then communications the next day, then it’s the final results on the 1st of October. We are climbing up the ranks and hope to do well in the upcoming contests. It’s incredibly rewarding showing the public through the house every day, we have had great feed back from visitors both from the US and NZ and plenty of support from back home along the way.

We will keep you posted on the upcoming results!