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| Christine's Corner |
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My name is Christine Valcarce and I am a high school student from Coral Reef Senior High. I am currently a junior at Coral Reef and joined the Solar Decathlon team as part of an internship program. |
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My first excursion was to the School of Architecture at FIU, where Leslie Goldberg, a student at the school, guided me through the architectural studio and explained to me what it is to be a student there.
Upon walking into the studio, it could be observed that the atmosphere was a pleasant, open culture where everyone interacted together freely. Students and teachers alike were communicating ideas and inspiring each other. As I looked around, I saw that the studio was like home to many of the students. Pictures of their pets for example, were hung around the desks. We walked around and talked to some of the students and they affirmed my observations. They said that as an architectural student you were always working. Sometimes you spend the whole day and night in the studio working on your project so the studio grows more like home everyday. They assured me however, that "although it may be a time consuming major is not as bad as you think" they said "for one thing you never get bored of being here because there is always someone here and you make plenty of friends." Also, the classes offer on outlet for freedom to be creative and unique. There is a competitive aspect to the whole thing, however. As Leslie explained, it is a four-year undergraduate program and then two more years to get your masters. After two years in the school, though each student send a portfolio of their best work for presentation to the Revision Board. This board reviews the work of each student and determines if the student can come back next semester or not. Therefore, each student is competing with each other to do their best and be accepted for the following semester. Students go through a series of eight design classes. The first designs are very abstract, and experimental. They experiment with different forms, shapes, and colors. As they progress in designs, they get more technical and more objective. I thought that an architectural student would design houses all the time, but the first three designs is more like art as a way of getting to know all the things around you. One project that caught my eye for instance was a basketball, where the students uninflated the ball to observe the different abstract shapes that it transformed into. After the third semester of design studio it gets more analytical and formal. Project analysis is done to research all possible factors such as light, location, sound, etc, that have to be considered, for they determine the end result. Therefore, this is done so that when they design a building it is in accordance with all these measures. Location for example, is a feature that requires aerial view and a site analysis to consider all the previously established buildings before deciding on a designing for a new building. For the solar decathlon, project analysis for light was done before designing the house. This aspect was taken very seriously as it affect the overall efficiency of the house to run on solar power and save energy. Light affected the configuration of the roof. The roof was constructed in the manner that its pitch was aligned north south, having the high side of the roof on the north, with the intention that the sun coming in through the windows was reflected sunlight and therefore the house does not have to generate that much energy to cool itself as it would if direct sunlight was being directed through the house. This pitch also allows for the solar panels to be positioned to absorb maximum energy. Another preconceived idea of architecture was that they must take a lot of math and physics I thought in order to know what type of framework, for example, is needed for a wall so that it doesn't just topple over. Yet according to Leslie and other architectural students, they say they leave that up to the engineers. So I guess my next trip will be to the engineering school. | |
The last couple of weeks I have been talking to the Mechanical team, specifically Pedro and Eugenia who have explained to me the HVAC system and Ted who introduced the water heating system to me.
A great deal of work goes into making a Heating, Ventilating and Air Conditioning system running smoothly and efficiently: calculations, research, more calculations, more research... Basically, all construction materials have "r" values, which is the heat resistance of the material. In other words, the higher the "r" value the more heat resistance. One issue that came up concerning the "r" value was with windows. Argon insulated windows have an "r" value of like 46 which is really good, but the HVAC team had to compromise for windows that have an approximate "r" value of 36 which is not bad but it just means that it is going to take more electricity to cool the house. Another thing to consider is the number of BTU's produced by the house.BTU stands for British Thermal Unit, a measurement of energy that pretty much means the amount of heat that it will take to loose one gallon of water. To cool a house the ideal thing is to have the lowest number of BTUs possible. A person produces an average of 400 BTUs, now imagine if the house on display in Washington will have to shelter about 30 people at a time, that means a lot of work for the HVAC team. Good luck guys. I think they are doing great though because looking at their calculations the ideal BTUs that their system would be able to handle is 20,000 and in actuality they have estimated it to be 13,000, so they are on the right track. Among the thousands of other things, there's the CLF or cooling load factor, which is a calculated number that determines how hard it is going to be to cool the house. Several factors influence the outcome such as time, location and season. For example, if the house is facing north in Washington DC, the cold winds of autumn may lower the CLF but during the hottest part of the day, the CLF may rise slightly. This in turn determines how hard yet efficiently the HVAC system will work to keep the house cool. The system itself is very simple and by the looks of it will give all the expected results. The efficiency of the system is that it alternates from a cooling system to a heating and vise versa. To heat the house all you have to do is operate the system in reverse. So instead of an endothermic process where the system absorbs heat, it becomes exothermic where it emits heat. This is a much better alternative to two separate systems because it saves electricity and eliminates the need of an electrical heat pump. The water heater is much simpler. Essentially, fresh cold water will either run into the house or be pumped in to the ICS, the Solar Thermal Collector Unit, in the roof where it will be heated. After being heated the water will be stored in tanks where electricity will maintained the desired temperature until it is pumped into the house for its various usages. Ultimately all the used wastewater will end up in a separate tank for proper disposal. The efficiency of this system is that the ICS heats the water. To heat water requires much more electricity than to just keep it heated, therefore, the electrical heater ends up doing less work and thus electricity is conserved. |
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