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)

We have had a fantastic reponse from the people of Canterbury with our 1st installation ocurring one day after opening.

Look out for Eco At the Canterbury A & P show November 9,10 & 11

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.

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!

The new premises are starting to look the part with a great shade of Eco Insulation green painted on the front doors and Signage going up next week.

We look forward to a great start to our new Christchurch office and helping with the rebuild of Christchurch.

I have been meaning to write this email for the last couple of weeks to thank the Awesome team from Eco insulation Wellington.
When I first rang to get an appraisal done, the sales team was 2-3 weeks away, but the helpful person on the phone said after a couple of other companies had come out to do their appraisals, give us a call, which we did.
Once that had happened, Jordan came out and inspected everything. He was great, was on time and came up with a package that suited us, with the type of insulation materials we were after and the price we wanted.

The install was booked for only 2 weeks away, which was excellent. I wish it had been only 1 week though, as the MASSIVE cold front came through, circumstances beyond their control, LOL.

The install team arrived on time and spent most of the day at our house, and were polite, unobtrusive. As they were doing the install I could feel the house getting warmer.

Since the insulation has been put under floor and in the ceiling, our heatpumps have basically switched off as all the heat is being retained. We can feel just walking around on the carpet, that the floor is not as cold as it was.

Damian was also excellent, inspecting the install teams work, and moving a few lights etc that were possibly too close to the insulation, great follow up from him.

I would just like to thank your team for their service as they have made our home much more comfortable, and will recommend you to our friends who also need insulation.

Regards

Jon Russell & Kirsty Cox