Thoughts on design

Musings on architecture and landscape design

I attended an interesting meeting last night.  It was the kick off meeting for the “Green Building Renovation: Smarter, Safer, Greener House Competition” which will take place this summer here in Longmont. Quite a title, but the basic idea is to find reasonably low priced, options for making homes more efficient and possibly even net energy produces.

We are talking about homes here, so reasonably priced in this case means $25,000; which if you think about it is not a whole lot when you are dealing with installing energy producing and storage systems, possibly replacing all windows, adding new insulation to the walls, floors, and ceilings, oh and installing extremely energy efficient appliances and equipment.

The folks running this competition are from DaVinci Quest, which is a tech heavy company interested in promoting innovation in a number of fields.  This Tech interest is quite evident in the judging criteria, I.E. power generation is the most heavily weighted.

After talking with some of the guys running the competition I get the impression that what they really are hoping for is to find inventers working on the next generation of alternative energy equipment; one that will offer the possibility of generating power cheaply in a residential setting.   They want to bring those ideas out of the closet by providing an opportunity for the ideas to be tested in real world conditions.

To that end, they are trying to get funding for this competition from donors who can assist with design and production of new equipment.  Given that intent, the design end of the competition should be running equal to or possibly several times as much as the final installed cost to the homeowners.  At least that’s the story the numbers and my conversations with some of the DaVinci guy’s seams to be telling at the moment.

The time frame and money amounts seem a bit tight for their end goals but I like and applaud the spirit of the endeavor.

There were quite a few comments given at the meeting about the criteria and testing for the contest, and at the moment all those aspects are in flux and will need some serious attention.  I’m not all that sure how much change that can provide given their current schedule, but I’m assuming the next competion season will be a bit more rigorous and they will have there ducks more in a row.

If you want to learn more about it here is the link to the competition site:

http://www.davinciquest.com/innovation-contests/greener-house