Despite Delay, RISD Solar House Heads to Competition

By Timothy C. Barmann, The Providence Journal, R.I.

Sep. 29–PROVIDENCE — It turned out to be a $60,000 miscalculation.

The solar house built by students from the Rhode Island School of Design was supposed to be shipped in sections, by moving vans, to Washington, D.C.

But this week, the solar house team of students, alumni and faculty advisers learned the bad news: the sections they so carefully designed were too big to fit inside the vans.

RISD students have spent the past two years designing and building an 800-square-foot house that runs entirely on solar energy. The house is RISD’s entry in the Solar Decathlon, a solar-house competition sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy.

The contest judging begins next week in Washington and RISD and the other 17 participating universities and colleges have to arrive at the National Mall with their entries by 6 a.m. tomorrow.

The bad news sent Jonathan Knowles into a panic. Knowles is an architecture professor at RISD, and the faculty adviser for the solar house project.

To get the house to Washington, the team would have to hire a moving company that has flatbed trucks. The cost: about $60,000.

They didn’t have the money.

On Monday, Knowles jumped into fundraising mode — again. He had already helped the solar team raise about $350,000 in donations, materials and services by contacting local companies and agencies. His own family had already contributed more than $12,000, he said.

Paul Arpin Van Lines of East Greenwich was going to provide four or five moving vans to ship the house to Washington and back for free. Kevin Sullivan, an operations manager for Paul Arpin, said the company vans can accommodate objects up to about 9 feet, while some of the house sections were 10-feet high, he said.

RISD itself wouldn’t be able to help with the transporation costs, Knowles said, since the school had already given the team a $60,000 grant. At the outset of the project, Knowles said, he promised RISD president Roger Mandell that the school wouldn’t get stuck with the bill.

Knowles explained the predicament to a childhood friend, Pete Evans, who owns Evans Findings in East Providence. The company makes small metal parts for the medical, automotive and lighting industries. On Tuesday, Evans presented Knowles with a company check for $5,000.

“It would be disappointing to see it come so far, only to see it hung up on the last little bit,” Evans said yesterday in a telephone interview.

Knowles said his parents, who live in Providence, offered to give $2,500 this week — their second $2,500 donation.

Gilbane Inc. chipped in another $5,000, Knowles said.

Those gifts, combined with about $2,400 raised through T-shirt sales, amounted to about $15,000 — still $45,000 short.

Yesterday, RISD agreed to sign the contract with the moving company, with the understanding that the solar team would continue fundraising to generate the rest of the money, Knowles said.

And so the moving began. Early yesterday, students began disassembling the house. Cristina Zancani said she helped take apart all the solar panels on the roof, carefully marking the connections to make it easier to put back together in Washington. Others used ratchet wrenches to take apart the house’s five sections.

Bob Amaral, a foreman from Capco Steel, used a forklift to gingerly pick up and move a section at a time and place them on flatbed trucks. Each section weighed 1,200 pounds to 1,500 pounds.

“This is nothing, compared to what we lift,” Amaral said. “You just have to be careful.”

Students tacked plastic sheets on both open ends of the sections to protect them from rain.

“I’m a little nerve-racked,” said Jonathon Strnad, a second-year graduate student in architecture.

The movers seemed less nervous, however.

“My concern is the structural integrity when they’re putting it on the trailer,” said Anthony Delfarno, owner of ADF Inc., a Warwick-based freight mover hired to bring the house to Washington.

While the house was structurally sound when it was put together, each individual section is not necessarily strong on its own, he said.

“Especially the way it’s designed, where it fits right together,” Delfarno said. “If one of these pieces racks, then it’s not going to fit together right.”

The movers plan to finish loading the house today onto five trailers and be on the road to Washington by 3 p.m.

ON THE WEB: http://solar.risd.edu.

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