Solar House on the Prairie: A High-Tech House Returns to Iowa
At the end of the winding country road that brings you into Honey Creek Resort State Park at Rathbun Lake in south-central, Iowa, sits a house that sends data back to Iowa State University every minute of every day.
The house, known as the Interlock House, was initially designed by students and faculty at Iowa State University for the 2009 U.S. Department of Energy’s Solar Decathlon, a competition that pits universities from around the world against one another to design the most attractive, cost-effective and energy-efficient solar house. The Interlock House was first assembled in Ames and then transported to Washington D.C., where it was reassembled on the Mall in competition with the other 19 solar houses. In spring and summer 2011, the house was reconstructed at Honey Creek.
Yet, the work is not over for the Interlock House. Along with serving as the activities center for the state park, the house is part of a $20 million National Science Foundation EPSCoR (Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research) grant to build renewable energy infrastructure and conduct energy efficiency research across Iowa. Data is being constantly collected at the house to inform researchers how the house is utilizing energy.
Ulrike Passe, assistant professor of architecture and director of the Institute for Physical Research and Technology’s Center for Building Energy Research at Iowa State University, and a research associate at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Ames Laboratory, is leading the research on the Interlock house, trying to learn how energy is being used by the house. She is taking measurements on a wide variety of elements of the house, from a weather station that measures wind speed and solar radiation outside the house, to 10 thermal points within the house that measure temperature and stratification.
Passe says that seeing the Interlock House being brought back to life and beginning to see the data the house is providing is the most exciting aspect of her work right now. Her team has been collecting data since October 2011, and although they can’t make judgments on it yet, Passe is eagerly examining the information as it streams in.
“I really want to understand how energy is moving through the house,” Passe says. “Hot air rises – everybody knows that, but how? And what affects it?”
Images from an infrared camera help researchers understand |
One of the ways that Passe and Shan He, a researcher on the project, have been measuring the house’s use of energy utilizes infrared technology. By taking pictures of the outside of the house with an infrared camera, they can see where the house is losing heat. Redder areas show where heat is being lost through the walls or around window frames, compared with blue, green, or yellow areas that show where the house’s insulation is doing an effective job of keeping the heat inside. Buildings like this one have been used before by researchers around the world to understand energy use. However, what makes this project most unique is the house’s use as an activities center. Two naturalists use the house every day as their base for operations, working and using the house much like it would be used by a real household. Having people in the house all day allows the researchers to better understand from a human perspective whether the house is comfortable and easy to use.
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One of the naturalists, Hannah Wiltamuth, loves that the house has all the features of a typical home. Because it was built as a demonstration house, it has a full kitchen, bathroom, and even a bedroom, although Wiltamuth admits they’re not allowed to nap on the job. “It’s great that the building basically has everything in it that you could ever really need. It’s just so comfortable of a feeling when you come to work.”
It does take more work than a typical home though, Wiltamuth says. “You do have to be proactive. You don’t really want to react to a situation. You want to stay on top of it.” This means being aware of the weather and working with the house to make sure it doesn’t get too cold or too hot. One way the house’s heat is controlled is through shutters on all the windows – pushing the shutters aside on cool days when the warmth of the direct sunlight is wanted and shading the windows when the naturalists want to keep the house cool.
“On sunny days when it’s warming up the house too much to have that sunlight come in, then we pull the shades over the windows and open them in such a way that we still get the sunlight but it’s indirect sunlight. It’s the direct sunlight on a window pane that will heat up a house so you’re avoiding that direct sunlight so you don’t get the heat with it,” says Wiltamuth.
Perhaps the part she likes best though, is the opportunities the house offers her to share ideas with people who come to visit and tour the house. “I think it’s amazing. We have so many talking points that we can use as far as sustainability,” Wiltamuth says. During tours, which are held every Wednesday and Saturday at 3:30 p.m., Wiltamuth highlights the home’s use of insulation made of blue jeans, its low energy use, and its use of regional products, like siding from Wisconsin.
Passe says that while she continues to collect data on the Interlock House, she is also expanding her research into new areas, including working with Eugene Takle, an Iowa State professor and climate scientist and Ames Laboratory research scientist, on developing building designs attuned to the changing climate. Passe says architects could use more accurate, location-specific climate data to test their building designs with future climate scenarios. “Architects have always seen the weather as an enemy. We have to figure out how to make it our ally,” says Passe.
Both her research with Takle and her ongoing research with the Interlock House aim to build that understanding.
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