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Student Blake Villwock (right) drills bolt holes on a beam while Eric Harrmann (left) cuts a slot for a reinforcing plate that will become a temporary foundation for the house being built for the Solar Decathlon at UW-Milwaukee on Friday. Photos by Charles Auer

Sean Ryan
sean.ryan@dailyreporter.com

About 15 University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee architecture and engineering students have three months to build an energy-efficient house to compete in the national Solar Decathlon Competition.

The U.S. Department of Energy contest pits teams from 20 universities in a competition to design and build a functioning, solar-powered house. The students designed the building to produce more electricity than it will use.

Here’s the tricky part: The house must be easily deconstructed.

“Once it’s all done and put together, then, hopefully, it’ll take us four or five days to put it back together once we take it all apart,” said Gregory Thomson, assistant professor at the UW-Milwaukee School of Architecture and Urban Planning.

In October, students will load the house parts on a truck, drive to Washington, D.C., and rebuild the house in four days in the National Mall and Memorial Park.

Rather than using nails to hold together wall, roof and floor components, the team will rely on bolts and screws that can be removed easily, said student Eric Harrmann.

Once the team finishes building the house in September, it will be separated into halves and trucked around Milwaukee as a test for the trip to Washington.

Watch The Daily Reporter in print and online for coverage of this project through its completion.