ODU and Hampton homebuilders on center stage

Students from Old Dominion University and Hampton University looked at the swarm of media and TV cameras coming toward them Wednesday and smiled. Finally the day had arrived; the Solar Decathlon was here, and they were ready.

Their model solar home, two years in the making, was covered with a fresh coat of gray paint and ready for inspection from the national media that descended on Washington's West Potomac Park near the National Mall to see all 19 finalists in the international competition in environmental home design and construction.

"I feel pretty good," said Mason Andrews, a Hampton architecture professor who helped oversee the science project. "There's some really different designs here, really interesting stuff. But I still like ours."

Nicknamed Unit 6 Unplugged, the solar home was created for an urban environment, squat and compact, but loaded with the latest environmental technologies. Win or lose, the home will come back to Norfolk and act as a studio for future collaborations.

Also, the Norfolk Redevelopment and Housing Authority has said it may build several homes based on the Unit 6 blueprint.

Judging in the competition will begin later this week when professional engineers and architects will score each model home in 10 categories - hence the name decathlon - including comfort, energy balance and affordability. The school that compiles the most points wins the prestigious contest, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy.

The winner will be announced Oct. 1.

The 19 homes are set in rows in what organizers call the Solar Village. Next to Unit 6 Unplugged is the entry from New Zealand, an open beach-house design with slated solar panels on the roof called First Light.

The two neighbors have already struck up a friendship of sorts, and Team Tidewater, as the ODU-Hampton collaboration is called, will host a dinner-and-a-movie night next week for the Kiwis. The hosts plan to show the 2010 film "Inception" and make something with a Virginia flair, maybe a Smithfield ham.

The dinner is one of several tasks that entrants must complete, along with washing clothes, cooking, doing dishes and other everyday household chores. Judges will measure how much energy, water and heat were used during the work, another part of the contest.

Jordan Smith, lead architect for Team Tidewater and a recent Hampton grad, said he will stay in Washington the entire two weeks of the decathlon. The public can tour the homes for free from Friday through Oct. 2.

"This has been my life," Smith said, "so I'm staying right here."

Other finalists include schools from China, Belgium and Canada as well as American schools such as the University of Maryland, Purdue University, Appalachian State and Ohio State.

One home that garnered much interest Wednesday was a rounded, fluffy-looking quirk from the Southern California Institute of Architecture and the California Institute of Technology. The fluffiness comes from exterior insulation covered by a vinyl skin. It looks like a giant pillow.

The Chinese entry is shaped like a Y and is made from six shipping containers with solar panels on top. Fengxin Xi, an architecture student, explained that the containers were recycled from Chinese ports and are cheap material to hold down the cost of the solar panels.

"It's very nice, yes?" she asked visitors.

The Maryland home, called WaterShed, was inspired by the rhythms of the Chesapeake Bay, said Scott Tjaden, a student studying environmental science and technology. A wetland runs below the center of the house and catches stormwater from the roof and dirty water from indoor sinks, the shower and appliances. The wetland filters pollutants and nutrients before the remaining water is fed to outdoor plants.

"We're trying to put nature, literally, into our home," Tjaden said, noting a green wall on the outdoor patio with vines and vegetables that "you just pick off the wall and eat."

The international competition, started in 2002, is intended to let young minds go crazy with alternative energies, energy efficiency, recycling, natural landscaping and pollution control. And this year the students did not disappoint.

There is one entry from the University of Illinois that aims to create a sustainable shelter within 12 hours after a natural disaster such as a tornado or flood. Team Canada worked with Native American tribes to shape an igloo-like home that is resistant to mold and fire, two elements that plague existing Indian housing.

The New Zealand model uses wool from native sheep as natural insulation stuffed into walls. The one from Belgium is a do-it-yourself kit, sort of like a Lego set, in which cube-shaped rooms can be moved around and pieced together.

Team Tidewater captures all its wastewater from the house, stores it in tanks and taps the water for irrigating outdoor plants. Its hallmark, though, is the sunroom.

A retractable window can be lowered with the push of a button to let breezes into the room like a patio. Or the window can be raised to enclose the sunroom, trapping solar heat in flooring tiles that can be utilized later.

One of the hardest parts of the contest is that the homes have to be taken apart and shipped to Washington and then reassembled within seven days. Some teams were still piecing their projects together Wednesday. Team Tidewater finished its work Tuesday night and was fresh Wednesday for the beginning of the competition.

Team members wore new, matching golf shirts and looked forward to the judging, and to a dinner tonight with ODU alumni traveling to Washington for the event.

"It's been something I'll always remember," said John Whitelaw, a project manager for Team Tidewater and an ODU graduate student. "It's just exciting to be here. I can't wait."

Scott Harper, (757) 446-2340, scott.harper@pilotonline.com