Sustainable living isn’t about a set of tools, but rather a mindset that leads to a set of behaviors. There’s research going into creating tools that can make sustainable living easier, but until society at large recognizes the environmental impacts of their daily decisions, these tools will not have full effect.
The green home of tomorrow
An enterprising team of Stanford students has designed a low-cost, solar-powered home that could lead the home-building industry to a more sustainable future and guide homeowners toward greener behavior.
I n 2010, residential homes in the United States accounted for 22 percent of the country’s carbon dioxide emissions, and roughly the same percentage of total energy consumption. At a time when market and federal pressures are steering the automobile industry toward a greener future, the places we lay our heads each night deserve a careful look as well.
The home-building industry represents a ripe opportunity for green innovation, and Stanford’s Start.Home hits the mark with a clever interdisciplinary blend of civil engineering, computer science and behavioral design. Conceived, designed and built by a team of undergraduate and graduate students, the solar-powered Start.Home aims to leverage technology to make inexpensive, sustainable living available to the masses.
At the project’s heart is the Core, a module containing all of the home’s major appliances, electrical, plumbing and mechanical systems, and run by software that keeps the home in its most energy-efficient state. The students envision a future housing market in which the Cores are built in a factory to maximize performance and quality control while reducing costs. Cores would then be shipped to construction sites to be hooked up to a building of the owner’s design. “We want to inspire industry to think about houses that can be built more like cars,” says project manager Derek Ouyang, ’13, a double major in civil engineering and architectural design. “The Core is like an engine for homes, and you can build any shell you want around it.”
Sustainable living doesn’t stop with the purchase of a home; a green home must inspire green people. To that end, the Start.Home is fully integrated with systems to guide homeowners toward more energy-responsible behavior – such as redesigned touchpad light switches throughout the house that glow to remind you to turn off unused electronics – and other devices that encourage reduced water consumption. “Ignorance stops here,” says Ouyang. “It is time to change our culture and our values around energy, and do it from the comfort of our own home.”
Take a tour of the Start.Home with Annie Scalmanini, ’11, MS ’13
The Start.Home design
A Green Foundation
The Start.Home’s design makes it passively energy friendly. An open floor plan and clerestory windows keep it naturally cool on hot days, and eliminate the need for electric lights during the day.
Energy as art
Even in a solar-powered home, it can be difficult to intuit your net energy usage. This art piece morphs throughout the day to provide an easy-to-read physical representation of your energy production and consumption.
Green Inside and Out
Decades-old lumber reclaimed from old homes minimize the Start.Home’s carbon footprint, but also hide innovative building materials that absorb heat and keep the house airtight to reduce heating and cooling bills.
Inside the Core
The Core is the Start.Home’s heart and brains. Its systems keep the house energy efficient, and off-site assembly-line production of the units reduces building costs.
Influential design
Sustainable design at home is only half the solution. The Start.Home’s interactive features aim to encourage people to become more energy-minded in their everyday life.
Powered by the sun
The Start.Home’s cutting-edge solar panels produce more than enough electricity to power the home. Any extra energy produced by the 6.8 kW array can be sold to the utility company for a profit.
Students learning on the job
Prior to building the Start.Home, many of the students had never swung a hammer with purpose, let alone hung drywall or plumbed a bathroom. Under the tutelage of five instructors from the Carpenters Union, the students honed their construction skills over spring break and throughout the summer. They embraced work that forced them out of their comfort zones and were transformed through the process.
“I can’t say that I now have a sudden urge to become a construction worker, but the project did truly inspire me in other ways,” said Lizzie Peiros, ’14, who is majoring in biomechanical engineering. “I spent much of the project learning about architectural design, green building technology and the works, but I learned even more about business design, leadership and how to productively communicate to a large interdisciplinary team.”
The project also allowed students the chance to test the skills they’d learned in the classroom. They turned engineering and design theory into 3-D computer sketches, into wood and plastic prototypes and, finally, into finished products.
“One of my favorite memories involved crawling under the house to install foundation braces that would carry any earthquake load down to the foundation,” said Kevin Chen, MS ’14. “It was nice to actually implement what I had designed.”
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Unlike many forms of technological improvements, buildings are slow to adopt new technologies. We tried to address the issue with our design when thinking about how to make green home tech more accessible, but a “solution” involves infrastructure, urban planning, transportation and possibly even economic incentives.
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As an engineer going into this field to design energy-efficient building systems, having this level of a nuts-and-bolts experience is huge. It changed my perception of how to design, and how those designs will be received by industry. We’ll all be better engineers and architects as a result of participating in this project.
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During a tour to a group of teenagers and parents, the teens were sulking about being at the house. But by the end of the tour they couldn’t stop gushing about the Start.Home, taking photos to post on Facebook and talking about their favorite features. If a well-designed, innovative house can inspire teenagers, it should inspire anyone!
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We saw advantages in modular housing to make green building affordable and scalable. Start.Home makes it easy for a homeowner to have a net-zero energy house. Many people want to go green, but when it comes to building it’s not as easy as going to the store to buy organic milk. We need to try to lower the barriers in the green building industry.
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As a student building this house and learning about the industry firsthand, it seems silly that these houses aren’t everywhere and that every building isn’t a green building.
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Our job as engineers is to work as hard as we can to design and build houses that are green, attractive and affordable. If we do that, people will make the sustainable choice.
Continued research
The Start.Home was Stanford’s first-ever entrant in the U.S. Department of Energy’s Solar Decathlon green-building competition. Although it was up against homes built by teams with much more experience, the Start.Home scored 951.9 points out of a possible 1,000, good enough for fifth place and just 18.8 points out of first. “For a first-time competitor that was relatively short staffed, and competing against more experienced teams, I think fifth place is pretty damn good,” said project manager Derek Ouyang.
The Start.Home scored in the top five of six categories, including a first-place tie for Energy Balance, though students were particularly proud of finishing tied for first in Affordability – their house cost $234,000, significantly less than any of the projects that finished ahead of Stanford – and tied for third in Market Appeal. These results, Ouyang said, reflect the team’s goal of designing a practical house that could provide a feasible direction for the industry.
Following the Solar Decathlon, the Start.Home was transported to Stanford’s Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve, where the preserve’s ranger and his family will make it their home, while also putting the house’s systems through rigorous real-world testing. Together with the lessons learned while constructing the Start.Home, this data will provide a valuable foundation for Stanford’s Solar Decathlon team, which recently earned a bid in the 2015 competition.
Related
- Start.Home website
Stanford Solar Decathlon, 2013 - Jan. 18, 2013
Stanford students build solar home in national competition - March 28, 2013
Construction begins for Stanford's student-designed solar house - May 11, 2013
The House That Teaches: Derek Ouyang at TEDxStanford - Aug. 2, 2013
Powered by the sun: Stanford students add solar panels to their zero-emissions house - Sept. 6, 2013
To encourage green living, Stanford students build a better light switch
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