solar decathlon

this is our fourth hangout, and i am sittinghere with two of our civils, so i am going to let them introduce themselves. hi, my nameis ally. hi, i am meyling. alright, and so we just wanted to thank you once again forbeing here on this chat with us, both these two sitting next to me and everybody out thereon the internet watching now. we are going to give you a little update and i am goingto let mr. bedley do you want to say anything before we get started? no, i just wanted tosay i really appreciate all the effort you are putting up there at scu and we are reallycheering you guys on to win this competition. this group of students last chat with youbefore we get a new group of students next year and i am going to miss these guys andthey are going to miss chatting with you so.

thank you, we are going to miss chatting withyou. thank you scu, win, we will miss you. awwww. we are going to miss you too and wecan't wait to see as many of you as possible when we come down to irvine and we hope youget to come see our house in person. it will be super exciting. they are definitely goingto be watching next year they just won't be in these chats but they are definitely goingto come out and visit and also vote for you in the peoples' choice, i know that for sure.yes, we would love to win the peoples' choice as well as whatever else we win because weare going to be awesome and win. we really really have loved to get to know you and yourclass over this past year and so happy we ran into you back in january when we weredown in irvine. we are really happy that you

guys have been following us and we are superexcited to see where this goes now that we are really about to start picking up up here.so we are going to go ahead and get started. brief overview of what we have been up tosince we last talked. we had a big fundraiser at the testarossa winery, some of our fabuloussponsors. we are going to go through a quick project update. we've got structural presentationand a couple questions for you guys. alright. part of our general project update was weheld a fundraiser at the testarossa winery like i mentioned and we had about 100 peoplecome out support us. we had the team who was there and we gave a presentation and it wasreally exciting to see the amount of people who were interested in what we were doingand supporting us moving forward. so that

was a great night. and then the other bigthing that we have been doing up here is that we talked about last time is all the bambooand we have actually emptied our shipping container of bamboo, all of the joists i believethat we need currently are built and so we have been super successful in all of our bambooconstruction. how cool is that. it was great to see that process when i was up there visitingyou guys. ya it was. i think you guys got some video of it that is pretty exciting.what's super exciting is that it was all done by students and ally was actually part ofthe team who really sort of pioneer and pushed through the bamboo design. so she is goingto tell you a lot more about that real soon now. so, class we have gone through a bunch,you have seen this slide before. we have gone

through with the past two hangouts, but whatcontests do you think the structural team is involved in. structural team. does anyonehave any answers? oh there we go. architecture? architecture. architecture, definitely playsa role in that. we have another student moving fast coming up here. running like the windi see them. i was kind of thinking maybe affordability because they might have to think about how...i was thinking maybe affordability... afordability because they have to think about how theyspend their money. yep, just about everything plays into it. yep, affordability becausewe have to make all the materials and figure out how to build this. here is one last. maybemarket appeal so it looks good people might want to buy it or something. market appeal.ya it has a little to do with the design of

the house too. so basically it is involvedin a lot of the competitions. one that you might not have mentioned was engineering.but, ya, the structure really does play a large role in the house because it is whatallows us to really build the house. so with that i am going to hand it over to meylingand ally. hey guys! so we are part of the structuralteam here for santa clara and our goal is to develop a structurally sound sustainableand innovative structural design for our home. and actually we have about eight studentson our structural team here, six of which have actually been working with the bamboofor the past year and then two of which have actually been working on the actual designof the structure. so i was one of the people

who worked with the actual bamboo and we werecreating bamboo walls and i-joists which are essentially beams. do you all know what beamsare? ya. they hold up all the floors and roofs and everything. so ya we have quite a bitof bamboo going into the actual structure of the house. so the reason we are using bamboois because timber has a negative effect on our earth. it is estimated that about 80%of the forests that once exhibited on earth have now disappeared and lumber needs forbuildings and everything contribute greatly to this so we are looking for an alternativeway to save some of our forests. and we are using bamboo because certain species of bamboocan grow up to 2 feet per day, which is extremely quick. and bamboo can be as strong as steelwhen you compare the weights of it. how crazy

would it be if you grew 2 feet per day? canyou imagine how tall you would all be? ya. they are kind of in shock right now. alrightwe will go back to what these guys have been doing then. so here are our i-joists or ourbeams. they are supporting all the roofs and the floor in the house. you can see, i thinkyou can see pictures of them below here. and there board material is made out of stripsof bamboo and glue essentially to make the middle part of the beam. and then solid piecesof bamboo for the rest of it. so the picture below and to the left is the completed beamand the three on the right are the three components. we are actually going to show you guy whatthese beams look like on our construction site a little bit later so you can see themin action. awesome. and here are our, we call

them gravity walls, they are holding up theweight of the roof. those are also made out of bamboo as you can see here. they're panelsso they all connect together in the structure so it is easy to construct. do you guys haveany ideas why we call them gravity walls? ya we have a couple answers. running up quickly.maybe because they hold up all the gravity of the house. ya, exactly! because which waydoes gravity pull things. down! exactly, and do we want our houses to fall down? no. that'swhat these guys do, they make sure that our houses don't fall down. so there you go thatis why we call them gravity walls. so we tested our beams and our walls in our big testingrigs so you can see on the right here are walls being crushed and our walls can actuallyhold about 29,000 pounds which is essentially

a semi truck so quite strong. and then ourjoists are shown on the left here being crushed and they hold about 5,000 pounds each. solike i said before about 5,500 pounds for the beams, and 29,000 for the walls. and oneof the lines in there is actually a wall made out of normal wood so they are very similarin strength. so 29,000 pounds that's about the size of a semi truck as ally said butit is also about the size of 15 vehicles or can anybody guess how many students that is,or 70 pound students that is? 70 pound students, shout out some guesses 1000. 5000. 10,000.20,000. i feel like you guys are on the price is right or something. slightly smaller guys.i think it is a competition for the largest number. michael. a lot. yes. 200. a littlebit more. 15,000. 250. getting closer. 500.

alright, so why don't we go ahead and tellyou. it is about 420 students. is that bigger than your guy's school? no. it is about halfour school. about half your school, that is still a lot of kids. can stand on one wallwithout it crushing. if you all fit. can you have half your school on one wall? i don'tthink that would work very well. alright well so that is just sort of to give you guys anidea of how strong these walls and joists are and a reminder to everyone who is watchingthat these are made of bamboo and that is tremendous achievement that these studentshave been able to complete so we are super excited about those. but now we are goingto take you outside to show you what our construction site is going to be looking like right nowbecause it has changed a bit since you last

saw it. because there was just the steel whenwe were out there last and you guys get to see the bamboo actually in action we are completelydone with some of them. so i am going to let... nicole. yes. you guys are really innovatingconstruction with the use of bamboo right? yep. for all of construction not just forcollege students but for globally. ya it is a really big innovation for the whole greenbuilding as an industry itself we are really pushing the envelope with it and it is somethingthat santa clara solar decathlon has been passionate about and really does want to continueto move forward with. ya and they can be used in different structures not just the solardecathlon so they can be built the same way and just be used in normal different structuresin the future. that's awesome. alright. my

class, be thinking of some questions as youhear some of these things and anyone that is out there that is watching feel free toemail the scu team with any questions you have or comments, we really appreciate youwatching and joining us as we all learn about this amazing thing that college students aredoing and we appreciate you joining us. can they hear us. ya. ok, so this is actuallythe top module of the structure we are not sure if you know what part that is but obviouslyit is the top module but i don't know if nicole has shown you guys this before. and actuallythey are almost about done building the actual structural part of it before they put allthe architectural features so everything that actually makes the house look pretty. butessentially the house is done, all we need

to put now are the windows for this module.and this structure actually already has all the bamboo joists inside of it and it hastji and that is another type of technically a timber type of joist so those are the thingsthat hold up the roof. and then it also has steel, the steel frame, which nicole showedyou the last time you guys got to see the structure. that was the steel i stood on lasttime, now it is a little harder because it is all closed up. so here are all the joistsin the floor of the building so this will be covered and this is what everyone willbe walking on. so essentially what goes on top of the joists is a bunch of plywood andthat is basically what your floor is inside of a house and these joists take the gravityof the house as well as shear forces so it

will also stay together in earthquakes andwindstorms as well. and then pretty soon we are hopefully going to have our walls framedand what the walls are essentially going to do is they are also going to take the gravityof the roof and they are also going to take earthquake and wind loads if there is a windstormor an earthquake. so i don't know if nicole told you about how it has to be transportedon trucks for the competition. how did that factor into your guys design of the housedid you have to do any extra calculations? we definitely had to do extra calculationsbecause this house is not like a normal house we have to take it apart and put it back togetherand ship it down to southern california as you guys know and bring it back. so what webasically did in order to do so was actually

we made the frame out of steel instead ofout of timber because the long spans of the house it is a lot safer for us to transportand put the house together and take it apart using steel because steel is much strongerand it comes in larger spans. if we were to use timber then it might have actually comeout larger because it would have required more timber and it would have just requiredmore timber. so they had to do a bunch of number crunching in order to figure all thisout and we are super glad and excited about it. so these ladies both worked on the twodifferent parts of our structural system with the innovation of the bamboo and then theactual structural design which means that meyling was actually in the steel shop atsos steel and did a lot of the actual drawings

and numbers and make sure it was all whatwe could actually fabricate and build off of. so i just want to say thank you to bothof you and i guess we will head back inside and that way we can answer any of your questions.we just wanted to show you a project update that we have been doing a lot of constructionand give you a chance to look at all the bamboo when it is actually in the house before weseal it all up because you will not be able to actually see it when we have the finalhouse down in irvine. awesome. we are definitely looking forward to see it down here in octoberand anyone that has a chance to come see it it is going to be a great thing to see thiswhole process through. they can also view your construction at your website right youhave a live webcam on it showing when the

construction is going on. so if someone wantedto actually watch the construction happening they could go to your website and there isa live webcam, am i right or wrong about that? there will be, we have initially planned onit we have had some technical difficulties with getting it up as we have experiencedwith this too the internet isn't always as friendly to us as we would have hoped butwe do have weekly time-lapse videos that are about 30 seconds long and they show you soyou can see the changes that have sort of happened throughout that week which is superexciting because when big things happen you are like wow all the sudden everything isbuilt. but we will hopefully get that webcam up so you guys can follow us live but if notthere are pictures and video that go up every

week, brian does an awesome job with our socialmedia. and what is the website again just to make sure we have it out there. sd13.scu.edu.great. say it one more time for us. sd13 so that stands for solar decathlon 13 becauseits 2013 dot scu santa clara university dot edu because its educational. perfect. alright,i hope you guys enjoyed the tour of our site. do you have any questions? anything you wouldlike cleared up? ya we definitely have a few questions we will call the kids up quicklyand they will speak loudly right boys and girls. ya. i think i see some awesome sunglassesin the crowd. oh ya those have been a hit for sure. how long will bamboo last as a constructionproduct? it should last as long as timber would. so probably about 100 years i wouldsay. here is another one coming. why haven't

other people used bamboo in construction?whenever you build a structure there are building codes that you have to follow that the citywrites and bamboo isn't written into the codes so that was what a lot of our project wasdoing was writing criteria for the necessary strength. that's why we did all of our testingto make sure it was strong enough to hold all of the loading and all the gravity thatthe house needed to hold so that is why it is not used typically because all of the testingis required to use them but we are hoping in the future it will be a lot more, it willbe a lot easier because maybe they will be written into the building codes. did you guysalso have to figure out how to work with bamboo and did that pose any sorts of challenges.yes, constructing with bamboo is a lot different

it is a much harder of a substance to workwith than timber so sawing through it and nailing into it is a little harder but wegot better at it. so through this whole process as these guys as fifth graders can take forwardis to have an imagination and be problem solvers is really an important skill beyond knowinga bunch of information it is about having those skills, right? exactly and i have anotherquestion sort of to interrupt you guys but when you think of bamboo what do you thinkof what does it look like normally? green they are saying. green, what about the shape?tall, cylindrical. exactly and can you normally see through that or is it normally solid.solid. oh. well actually it was mixed there were some that said see through and some thatsaid solid. exactly so there are different

types of bamboo and a lot of the time youend up with bamboo that is hollow which can make it even more difficult to work with sothese guys really did overcome a lot of challenges and that is why we work with a particularstrand of bamboo that we actually have to ship in from vietnam. i think we told youguys about how our bamboo was on a ship somewhere in the middle of the ocean. ya, we rememberthat. how many feet of bamboo did you use to construct your house? we probably, 4 or5 hundred at least. i know we have about 150 of the beams in the house and those are, waiti am not doing my math right. thousands of feet of bamboo is a better answer. it is anextra zero, there is an extra zero. that was a math question on the spot to, those arealways great. when do you think you will be

able to complete the area of the house? what'syour estimated timeline on completing the area of the house? we will have it ready tobe shipped down to irvine. no, so starting monday we, this is our last week of schoolthis is finals week. starting monday there will be a team of about 25 of us working fulltime on the house on construction to get it all done. so, we are going to be working reallyreally fast and really really hard and really long hours to hopefully have it ready forsome testing and some run through and practice and have it open to the public in august,before we have to ship it down to irvine so then you guys can see it. so finals beingover means you have more work to do? yes, but it's different work. does wood or bamboorot faster or just wear out faster? it really

depends on how it's treated so all wood isusually treated for rotting. in terms of bamboo if you have it out in the heat too much allthe water basically gets sucked out of it in which case timber is a lot stronger whenit is in the heat but besides that it really just depends on how it is treated. but howhot would that heat be? if it is in the sun 24/7 direct exposure that's probably whenthe bamboo is a lot weaker than timber would be. so did you have to work around that atall? we did, well. or because our bamboo is not directly exposed are we good? we are good.do you think it will be easy to move the house from one place to another? i hope so. i designedit so it would basically be a lot easier to move the house but because it is so largeit is going to be difficult in any circumstance

but hopefully it will be easy to take apartand put back together and transport. they have already tried moving the roof modulebecause when it was delivered they initially put it on top of the rest of the house andthen they took it back off so i guess we will find out what happens when we try to put itback on again. so, two more questions, but part of this that the kids can learn is youhave to anticipate challenges that you might face when you are approaching projects. definitely,this project has thrown so many obstacles that we were not expecting at us but everytime we have been able to overcome them so you can definitely do anything you set yourmind to. ya, that determination is important. how long will it take to take apart the houseand put it back together? well, the department

of energy only gives us about just over aweek i think it is to set it up and take it apart so we have to get it done in what amountof time if we want to have it open for the competition. alright here is our last question.when are you going to ship your house down to irvine? i believe the final end all beall date when the trucks drive away from santa clara is currently set for september 17th.awesome, alright that's it for our questions. thank you so much. thank you scu. thank youguys. so we have two quick questions for you guys just before we go to see if you werepaying attention to what we said. so the first one is how many students were actually workingon the structural team? so it's me and meyling and a few others. do you remember? studentsworking on the structural team. can we get

a raise of hands for a. oh hang on, here wego ok. raise your hands if you believe it's a. no hands, oh two hands raised. one handraised. what about b? b raise your hands. a lot of hands raised. yay, good job we don'thave to go through the rest. that is the correct answer that you guys clearly were paying attention.awesome. you guys are going to ace any quizzes in the future. so now do you remember whereour bamboo comes from do you guys want to go ahead and yell it out at us? vietnam! exactly,good job guys. ya. let's see do we have another question? nope we don't. alright, thank youso much for paying attention and for tuning in with us, we love being able to talk withyou and are super bummed, even though you guys probably excited that it is summer thatyour school year is ending because it has

been great hanging out with you and we reallydo appreciate you guys tuning in following us it gives us a tremendous sense of motivationand excitement just within the team around what we've been doing and we are so happyto be able to share it with all of you. we will be cheering you on. this group of kidswill definitely be cheering you on as you go forward for victory and we are lookingforward to the next hangout which will be i guess in august. yes, august 1st we've gotthe date all set. it is another thursday and i am going to invite two more people on camerareal quick. brian and brittnie who have been here for all of our hangouts and have beensuper important in making it possible. thank you guys it has been an amazing experiencewith you guys. if anyone has communicated

with us via email you've been emailing thesetwo. brian has been fabulous with figuring out all of our technical stuff so while weblame all the problems on him he is also the one who has fixed them, so thank you. andthanks for sticking it out with us. so let me give you a quick energy saving tip beforewe wrap this up. so energy saving tips was from our energy saving tips it was number7, but if you put lamps in the corner of rooms then light will bounce off two walls and helpilluminate the room even greater, so there's how to save a little bit of electricity foryou guys. and once again like always if you have any questions please email us at scusolar13@gmail.comand then if you were part of this at any point we'd really love to hear from you just sowe know who is out there and who we are talking

to not that we don't love the kids down inirvine but we want to know who else is out there. and then follow us on facebook, twitter,like us wherever you are on the internet we would love the support and that's really howwe sort of reach out to the public. this will be on youtube so feel free to watch it whenevershare it with your friends. you can say you were there when it was happening live. sothank you all and once again we are going to miss you guys down in irvine. bye! so markyour calendar like i said august 1st we will be back at 9:00 am and we will definitelybe doing other things between now and then and keep you all in the loop about what weare doing. so thank you for tuning in. thanks. bye! bye again!