In a standard home, you have to run water and wait for the hot water to reach the faucet. In this home, water is heated on demand.
“It heats it when you need it,” Moy said. “You’re saving energy and not wasting water.”
When the water is hot, a button in the bathroom goes from blue to red so you know it’s ready.
About 60 students from a number of different disciplines worked on the project over two years. Architects and engineers occasionally clashed, according to Moy. The architecture students would come up with an idea, he said, “and then the engineers come in and say, ‘You can’t do that.’”
After the decathlon, the house will be donated to a veterans’ resource center at California State University-San Marcos.
“What’s the point of just building a house to try to win a competition?” said Moy. “If you can help someone out at the same time, why not?”
©2013 The Record (Hackensack, N.J.)
Distributed by MCT Information Services
