The University of Nottingham is to represent Britain in an international competition to design, build and test drive Europe’s most attractive, effective, and energy-efficient, zero carbon, solar-powered house. A team of architecture and engineering students from the Department of the Built Environment are taking on 18 universities from across the world in the very first Solar Decathlon Europe which will be staged in Madrid between June 18 and 27 2010. Britain’s entry — The Nottingham HOUSE — is a full scale highly marketable, zero carbon starter home. It will showcase the powerful combination of solar energy, energy efficiency, and the best in home design. Built in partnership with the construction materials company Saint-Gobain, it will demonstrate how low energy architecture can lend itself to the mass market. The L-shaped design is so versatile it can be worked in terraces, rows or stacked as apartments.

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This passive solar home is designed to capture and store the suns energy in the windows. These windows contain more than 3000 pounds of water capable of storing 75000 Btu’s of energy on a good sunny day. Free, couresy of Mr. sun.

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This video shows how well an energy efficient home can work with nothing but the suns energy. No heat is installed and the house has not dropped below freezing, even when the temps went down to -4.5F and no sun the house only went down to 41.9F

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