The University of Waterloo Warrior Home Team recently competed at the US Department of Energy Race to Zero competition in April of 2018. Five students, representing HabitatUW and the University of Waterloo, went to Golden, Colorado to compete against 84 universities from 8 different countries. The goals set earlier by this team were met and surpassed with the team placing first in the Attached House category. The Warrior Home team was the only international team to place within the top 5 overall.
With valuable feedback from the judges, the team will move forward to execute changes to make the design even better as they go into the next year.
Orchard Design has been a partner in this project by providing resources and support to the University of Waterloo team as they developed the Kehl-0 attached housing design. This design intends to bridge the gap between affordable housing and energy efficiency and will have aspects of it implemented into the Kehl Street Development project that Habitat for Humanity in the Waterloo Region is building. Keith Reycraft, a founder of Orchard Design has been designing multi-families housing for over 2 decades, and was impressed by their ideas and their detailed submission into the competition.
The U.S. Office of Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy posted earlier this week saying:
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced winners of its fifth annual Race to Zero Student Design Competition, a competition that challenges collegiate teams to apply sound building science principles to create cost-effective, market-ready designs for zero energy ready homes and schools. A zero energy ready building is a high performance building that can offset all or most of its annual energy consumption with on-site renewable energy. This significantly reduces annual energy costs while improving comfort, health, safety, and durability. Student designs in the Race to Zero competition must meet either DOE’s Zero Energy Ready Home program requirements or the Advanced Energy Design Guide For K–12 School Buildings–Achieving a Zero Energy Building.
“The students participating represent the next generation of architects, engineers, and construction managers that can fully integrate building science with design,” said Kathleen Hogan, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency in the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE). “Greater building energy efficiency offers billions of dollars in potential energy cost savings in our homes and schools—and the experience at Race to Zero helps students and industry come together to apply technical resources from the DOE to real-world solutions for critical building industry challenges.”
Attached Housing Contest
First place: University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada
Second place: Miami University, Oxford, Ohio
Congratulations Warrior Home Team!