Two local builders have spent the past 18 months helping young
Bay Area engineers construct a cutting-edge solar home, and next
week they will build it all again from scratch at the National Mall
in Washington, D. C.
Two local builders have spent the past 18 months helping young Bay Area engineers construct a cutting-edge solar home, and next week they will build it all again from scratch at the National Mall in Washington, D. C.
The U.S. Department of Energy Solar Decathlon kicks off Oct. 9, and Steve Ashford and Bill Cline of Gilroy-based BNS Construction are flying to Washington early Thursday morning to join about 30 current and former students from Santa Clara University and the California College of Art. The team has already shipped everything they need to reassemble the sleek 800-square-foot home in nine days. This includes two shipping containers full of tools, appliances and linens, and the $1.4 million crescent-shaped prototype house, cut into three sections.
“The only thing you won’t be able to do is flush the toilet,” Ashford said with a smile Wednesday.
The lack of plumbing will not detract from the home’s stunning technologies. A motion sensor in the bathroom alerts the hot water heater so users don’t have to wait as long for steamy water. Run-off from the shower, sinks and dishwasher also percolates through layers of natural and synthetic materials, and links up with a rain water reserve to irrigate a garden and lawn predominated by six-foot blades of California grass. The sprinkler system will draw weather data from satellites to portion out just the right amount for that day, and residents can access a Web-based “dashboard’ that monitors the home’s minute-by-minute energy consumption. As an added luxury, residents can also control window shades, lights and heating and cooling from an iPhone.
“We’re definitely going for the gold,” Ashford said.
Two years ago, at the third biannual competition, the Bay Area “Cinderella team” placed third due to poor architectural reviews. That’s why they brought on California College of Art students to fancy up the home. The “Refract House” derives its name from the structure’s bent shape that maximizes, or “controls,” sunlight. Appearance alone, the house would be among kin in the Hollywood Hills, even if the front-yard mulch came from 18 months worth of construction debris and the redwood siding came from an abandoned barn’s re-milled beams.
“It’s so exciting to walk out to the job site and see something that we drew being built!” wrote Kyle Belcher, Team California’ project manager and a CCA architecture student who graduated this summer.
Half of the $1.4 million has paid for materials and construction while the other half supports staff and students. Dozens of companies and nonprofits contributed the money, ranging from Gilroy’s Cresco Equipment Rentals – which provided the shipping containers and mulcher – to Applied Materials, an international technology company with more than $8 billion in annual revenue.
Team California, the only Golden State representative, and the other 19 teams from across the world will begin moving their supplies onto the National Mall at midnight Thursday. The competition begins Oct. 8 and ends eight days later, during and after which anyone can tour the homes until the teams disassemble them Oct. 19.
“We’ve got to assemble it out here in California, disassemble it, ship it, reassemble it, then disassemble it again,” Ashford said. That includes the 1,800 square foot deck he and Cline helped build.
“This year we had some bigger, stronger boys on the team, so we made the deck a little bigger,” Ashford said with a chuckle. Helping students and young professionals navigate their way from books and drawings to real life is where Cline and Ashford usually came in.
“They’ve got great educations, but most of these kids have gone from school to school to school to get where they are. Few have actually done any construction work,” Ashford said inside the old downtown skate shop at Monterey and Martin streets that BNS Construction is renovating for a bookstore. Instead of working long hours on his project here, Ashford and Cline will spend the next couple of weeks working 12- and 14-hour days with tomorrow’s generation.
“It’s just amazing working with these guys,” Ashford said. “These are the kids who will take us into the future.”
To see more pictures of the Refract House, visit www.refracthouse.com.
To learn more about the Solar Decathlon, visit www.solardecathlon.org.
