University of Waterloo students design sustainable living with zero emissions homes.
Warrior Home is a design team at UW that focuses on designing net-zero Energy Homes.
Warrior Home won first place in the attached housing category at the Race-to-Zero Design Competition on April 22 in Golden, Colorado.
The University of Waterloo was the only international team to place in the top two in any of the competition categories.
Warrior Home started in the Spring 2017 term to assist Habitat for Humanity Waterloo Region with improving their design for affordable housing in the community.
The team signed up for the Race-to-Zero to help them take on this task.
They stated that in the competition they would only learn more about the energy efficient housing design process to build a strong knowledge base to develop a strong competitive team for the following year.
The team grew to 50 active members and they soon realized that they had a strong chance of creating a full comprehensive house design for the first year.
When February came along, the team submitted the progress report to get into the final competition in April.
A week later they were selected.
What was oncean outlandish idea of participating turned into reality. The Warrior Home team put in hours upon hours to finalize their design and complete the final in March.
In the middle of exam season, Warrior Home sent five students to represent Waterloo at the final presentations of the Race-to-Zero Competition.
Warrior Home was competing against some of the top universities across the United States as well as other international universities.
The team is proud of the five students who presented the design and are thrilled to announce their win.
Race-to-Zero is an international design competition hosted by the US Department of Energy (DOE) and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and is targeted toward students with an interest in the design of Net Zero Energy Homes.
Warrior Home’s 2018 Race-to-Zero submission focused on a redesign of the current Habitat for Humanity four-unit attached housing block within the ongoing Kehl Site development.
The future-proofed redesign focused on identifying areas in the current HabitatWR home design that can be improved without hindering HabitatWR’s key principles.
The team was able add energy efficient technologies, building enclosure advancements and innovative construction manuals to the design to promote sustainable living and practice affordable housing.
They are looking forward to continuing with HabitatWR and are getting ready for another year of design for the Race-to-Zero Design Competition.
The team welcomes new members and encourage everyone to come out and participate with either the Warrior Home Design Team or the UW Habitat for Humanity Campus Chapter, regardless of faculty or program.
