A student design team at the University of Waterloo has been awarded US $50,000 to advance to the next stage of a high-profile competition to design and build energy efficient homes.
Warrior Home, which is made up of more than 50 students, many of them from engineering programs, was selected for funding in the Solar Decathlon Build Challenge, an event sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy.
Members of student design team Warrior Home hope to repeat their success when they built an energy efficient home for an Indigenous family and took second place in a high-profile competition in 2021.
The team successfully presented its proposal for a net-zero retrofit of a century home in Kitchener to a jury of industry professionals at an event last weekend in Golden, Colorado.
The prize boosts the team’s fundraising efforts to $155,000. Other contributions have come from backers including Mattamy Homes, the Kitchener-Waterloo Association of Realtors and Waterloo Engineering.
Construction on the home is expected to begin in late summer or early fall in conjunction with the Kitchener-Waterloo Urban Native Wigwam Project, a non-profit housing group.
Thirteen other university teams also received funding to proceed with their projects, with seven more still working towards approval.
The two-year contest will culminate in the spring of 2023 when completed projects are judged. Universities in the running are from the U.S., Canada, India and Australia.
In the finals of the last competition in 2021, Warrior Home took home second-place honours for an energy efficient house it designed and built for an Indigenous family on a reserve in the Owen Sound area.