With an early start Saturday morning our class meets up at the megabus.com NYC bus stop for our day long trip to DC, to view our competition as well as further progress our understanding of our magnificent Empowerhouse home designed and built by our fellow students. At 11:30 we arrived in DC followed by exploring the DC underground metro (picture included metro platform). Upon arriving to the Solar Decathlon site at the DC mall our group first toured our home, which attracted a large line of Decathlon participants, and included a handful of well spoken students explaining the features of the house, inside and out. We listened to explanations about the highly insulated walls, efficient HVAC system with heat recovery, the triple pane windows from Intus Windows, a Lithuanian window maufacturer, a description of the family moving into the house after it will be placed in Deanwood (a suburban area of DC), then an overview of the elements and appliances used in the house. When exiting the house Max Kaufman (picture inserted of Max outside) handed us a well crafted Empowerhouse post-card that had embedded within seeds to grow basil, parsley and chive. The post seeds in the post card were examples of plants that we had growing in the community garden in Deanwood. On the front of the card was a map showing the route that the house would take from the National Mall to it’s final resting spot in the community of Deanwood.

Our team wasn’t able to visit Deanwood as the day dragged by, we were able to find a decent Italian restaurant to feed ourselves (our first real meal of the day) in the area Eastern Market. During this late lunch/early dinner we discussed the project and Heather Zanoni and how her time in DC was going as the competition was finishing up.

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Lee Beckman
Max Kaufman
Alana Gerson