A class of
Lansing Community College students beat out competitors from
major Michigan universities for the chance to build a highly
energy-efficient home on
Mackinac Island—a fitting tribute to a town
with no automobiles.
The
BuildUP! Building a Brighter Michigan Sustainable Housing Design
competition
challenged Michigan college students to design, from
scratch, a home so energy efficient that it produces as much energy as
it consumes.
The team,
Mac Zero,
involves LCC students from various disciplines, including construction
management, architecture and landscape design. They have also earned
$10,000 in scholarship money.
“The students worked their butts off on this,” says Jed Dingens,
co-advisor on the project and architecture technology instructor at
LCC. They worked up until 11 p.m. on Easter night, midnight being the
deadline, he says.
“It’s very difficult and expensive to achieve net-zero efficiency, but they did it,” says Dingens.
The Mac Zero team traveled throughout the region to study other
net-zero homes. There are “a handful” throughout Michigan, Dingens
says, but none on Mackinac Island. The LCC design is a
3,075 square-foot Victorian style home that will be rented out for residential use, with the proceeds going to establish a scholarship fund.
Up next is raising enough money for construction and materials—about $600,000—and employing
Meadowlark Builders of Ann Arbor to build the design.
Dingens says this project is in preparation for the 2013
Solar Decathalon, a nationwide student design competition to build a net-zero energy efficient home on the
National Mall in Washington, D.C.
Source: Jed Dingens, LCC Instructor of Architecture Technology
Writer: Andy Balaskovitz
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