Hello all,

It’s been a while since anyone posted anything, so I’ll break the awkward silence and update you all on what’s happening at the moment. 

While it may seem like we’ve taken more than the 5 minutes R&R Tom mentioned in his last entry, the Solar Decathlon team has in fact returned (for a short while) to normal academic life and the sleepless nights that entails; the second years are busy with an international competition, third years with a dissertation and us sixth years are busy trying to get up to speed on our final year projects.  For all of us the Solar Decathlon has been a fantastic distraction from the hypothetics of academia, allowing us all to get to grips with real building as well as the demands that has on design, and it is a bit strange finding myself back in front of a drawing board (even if my Solar Decathlon mode was more often a meeting room or computer than the site).

I don’t need to recount Ecobuild, because Tom summed it up perfectly in his last blog; but needless to say the team is now galvanised and ready to deliver a much improved house for Madrid; and there is a lot more work to do…

For those of you who visited, you would have noticed that there were bits and pieces that were unfinished (furniture, a lack of a kitchen sink, a large module missing from upstairs etc…), and those are going to have to be finished quickly to meet the transport deadline for Madrid.  There are also changes being made following the dry run that was Ecobuild, where we learnt what worked and what didn’t.  This means that as soon as our reviews are over next week and we’re officially on holiday for Easter we’ll be getting geared up and heading back to site…though I suspect I will have to finish a lot of drawings before I get to do any of the fun stuff.

So that’s what’s happening at the moment, and it seems like a good place to end. Next time, when (if) I get some free time, I’ll try and go into a bit more detail about some of the parts of the house that attracted the most interest (for a start the PDEC system will be going in soon!).

So thanks for those of you who made it to Ecobuild, and for those of you who read this post.  It won’t be long before there’s a fresh burst of activity on site, and the on the airwaves!

Ben