Ladies and Gents, welcome.

The Solar Decathlon team effort began in earnest this week as we, the impressionable youth that make up the student body of the University of Nottingham Built Environment, have descended upon the site. Fresh from the Christmas break we’ve donned hard hats, taken tools to hand and gathered in the gargantuan studios of the King’s Meadow Campus to start construction on the Nottingham HOUSE.

Those who were superbly committed to the dream already had the walls for one module of the eight-module design standing by the time they were joined by the remainder of the team this past Monday, free now from the January assessments. Without delay, these fresh hands became familiar with the Isover glass fibre insulation, with the Vario DPM, and with the interconnections of all elements of the design.

The learning curve has been steep and all members have undergone enough Health & Safety training to last a lifetime, but hard work was been rewarded this week with a second module becoming three-dimensional, wall panels having been moved so gracefully moved into position by our resident Fork Lift King, Dave. Pictures will follow soon, I promise!

All faces are keen now to get involved in all aspects of building, working 9-5 down at the site. Our half-way goal is the Ecobuild exhibition in London in early March, where we’ll get a chance to present the project to other similarly-minded teams, before bringing the HOUSE back up to Nottingham to prepare it for the Solar Decathlon in June. More details on that in the coming weeks. Plus, we have even more helping hands in the form of the MEng students who were officially welcomed to the team on Friday.

So! Look forward to many an update right here on this blog  where all members of the team will be contributing, and we have some exciting plans involving hilarious video blogs (we’ll try to make them informative too…) and a new-look website. We’ve taken the reins now, so hold on to your hard hats!

This is where it starts, folks.