Sep 20 - Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News - Shawn Vestal The Spokesman-Review, Spokane, Wash.

Tucked behind the banks of engineering buildings at Washington State University, a tiny marvel of a home has taken shape.

The wooden floors come from a quickly renewable Brazilian eucalyptus forest. The corrugated metal spent its youth deflecting Palouse rain before being recycled as siding and panels. And all of it -- the dishwasher, the flat-screen swivel TV, the washer and dryer, even the four-person electric car parked outside -- is run by the sun.

"It's designed to be off the grid," said Andrea Read, a member of the WSU team that's spent three years designing and building the 650-square-foot house.

"You can put this house in the middle of a field, and it would be completely sufficient on its own."

The house is headed to the Solar Decathlon, a federal competition designed to inspire economical design and promote solar power.

Read and other architecture, construction management and engineering students just finished the home, sprinting through 18-hour days to finish construction last week -- just in time to take it apart again for the trip to Washington, D.C., where it will be reassembled for the competition on the National Mall.

The project proves that more efficient, sustainable design isn't far off in the future, said Matt Taylor, a WSU assistant professor of architecture who advised the students on the project.

"Solar energy is viable right now," he said.

"It makes sense right now. … These people are absolutely re-thinking the way we as Americans live, and it makes me smile."

The home is divided into two spaces by a module in the center that contains the kitchen on one side and the bathroom and laundry room on the other.

The center unit divides the bedroom/bathroom and the living room/home office/kitchen.

The students had a little welding help, but "everything else we've done ourselves," Read said.

"All of our cabinetry is being done here. We're putting together our refrigerator."

In such a small space, efficiency becomes paramount.

The sectional couch pieces -- built from construction remnants -- contain storage spaces and slide-out tables.

An ingenious coffee table swings up and out to become a dining table.

The refrigerator is 10 times better insulated than a typical home unit. Just two hours of power each day are used to cool it -- and the heat generated by that process goes toward heating the water.

"So many things have to have multiple functions to be usable," Read said.

Eighteen university teams are competing in the Solar Decathlon, and WSU is the only Northwest entry.

The Department of Energy provided each team with a list of requirements and $5,000 -- far less than needed to meet the project goals. Read said the cost of building the WSU home would have been between $160,000 and $180,000, except that the vast majority of materials used in the project were donated.

The rest came from alumni contributions.

The results of the competition will be announced.

After the competition, the home is headed for Seattle, where Seattle City Light will use it to study and promote solar power.

For Read -- a third-year architecture student -- and a handful of other students who've been involved since the beginning, the project has created a unique environment for learning.

Though plenty of students gain some measure of practical, hands-on experience in their intended field, few projects are as intensive or time-consuming as this.

"The experience they're getting is outrageous," Taylor said.

Read hopes to have a career working in green architecture, an area of growing interest.

She says the project illustrates an important concept of such sustainable design.

"You can do something that's beautiful," she said, "and still have it be efficient."

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